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Do  not  remove  from  214  Dec.  Arts 


THE 
POPULAR  THEATRE 


BOOKS  BY  MR.  NATHAN 

ANOTHER     BOOK     ON     THE 
THEATRE 

EUROPE  AFTER  8:15  (in  collabo- 
ration luith  H.  L.  Mencken) 

MR.  GEORGE  JEAN   NATHAN 
PRESENTS 

BOTTOMS  UP 

A  BOOK  WITHOUT  A  TITLE 

THE  POPULAR  THEATRE 


The 

POPULAR  THEATRE 

by 

George  Jean  Nathan 


PROPERTY  OF 
DEPARTMENT  OF  DRAMATIC  ART 

New  Tork 

ALFRED  A.  KNOPF 
MCMXVIII 


COPYRIGHT,  1918,  BY 
ALFRED  A.  KNOPF,  INC. 


PRINTED   IN    THB    UN1TBD   flTATIS   OF   AMERICA 


College 
Library 

/ 


"  I  deal  not  with  theories,  but  with 
things  as  they  are." —  JOANNES  CANTAC- 
UZENE. 


661239 


Preface 

Mr.  Ernest  Newman,  brought  by  vocational  ordi- 
nances to  review  the  sawings  and  mewlings  of  the 
heterogeneous  catgut  scrapers  and  contraband  philo- 
mels  who  every  other  night  were  posturing  them- 
selves before  London  audiences  as  musicians  and 
singers,  became  one  day  so  riled  at  the  whole  business 
that  he  publicly  announced  he  would  no  longer  at- 
tend any  performances  save  those  of  artists  who  had 
made  a  reputation.  After  fourteen  years  of  unre- 
mitting theatre  attendance  in  New  York  —  a  period 
during  which  I  have  nightly  been  spectator  at  the  per- 
formances of  authors,  actors  and  managers  who  have 
made  reputations  —  I  am  of  a  mind  to  announce  that 
I  will  no  longer  attend  any  performances  save  those 
of  authors,  actors  and  managers  who  have  not  made 
a  reputation. 

To  the  making  of  a  reputation  in  the  popular  thea- 
tre of  New  York,  everything  would  seem  to  be 
essential  but  talent.  One  is  so  surrounded  in  this 
theatre  by  famous  playwrights,  famous  actors  and 
famous  producers  —  all  more  or  less  first-rate  eighth- 
rate  men  —  that  the  occasional  glimpse  of  an  utterly 
unknown,  utterly  unidentified,  intruder  bursts  upon 
the  vision  with  a  sensation  as  agreeable  aesthetically 
as  the  sudden  spectacle,  on  a  dark,  gloomy,  rainy  day 
in  Spring,  of  a  young  woman  in  a  soft  white  dress 

I  7  ] 


RREFACE 

with  a  pink  flower  on  her  hat.  It  is  in  no  small  de- 
gree to  such  newcomers  that  the  critic  of  the  theatre 
looks  for  stimulation  and  cheer.  For  years  the  critic 
has  watched  with  leaden  eye  and  numbed  brain-pan 
the  uninspired  antics  of  so  endless  a  noctambulation 
of  celebrated  aurhorlets  and  anointed  dudelers  that 
his  hope  is  ever  for  the  new  unknown,  for  the  writer 
who  has  never  composed  a  play  that  has  run  five 
hundred  nights  on  Broadway,  for  the  actor  whose 
name  has  never  contributed  to  a  theatre  program  the 
appearance  of  the  first  page  of  the  Evening  Journal, 
for  the  producer  who  has  never  been  compared  in  the 
ebullient  newspapers  to  Reinhardt  or  Stanislawsky  or 
Adolph  Appia.  He  waits  patiently  through  a  dozen 
plays  by  famous  dramatists  of  Broadway  for  a  play 
by  some  unknown  Edward  Massey,  through  a  dozen 
performances  by  famous  actors  of  Broadway  for  the 
performance  of  some  unknown  Opal  Cooper, 
through  a  dozen  productions  by  famous  producers 
of  Broadway  for  a  production  like  that  of  "  The 
Poor  Fool  "  by  some  unknown  amateur  out  of  Wash- 
ington Square.  The  fame  of  the  American  popular 
theatre  gives  us  dramas  by  Jane  Cowl  and  Otto 
Hauerbach,  acting  like  that  of  Robert  Edeson  and 
Holbrook  Blinn,  productions  like  those  of  "  Upstairs 
and  Down  "  and  "  Daybreak."  The  obscurity  of 
the  American  popular  theatre  gives  us  plays  by 
Eugene  O'Neill,  acting  like  that  of  the  highly  adroit 
amateur  at  the  Neighbourhood  Playhouse,  produc- 
tions like  those  of  the  beginner  Hopkins'  "  Poor 
Little  Rich  Girl  "  and  the  beginner  Williams'  "  Jus- 
tice "  and  the  beginner  Kugel's  "  Old  Lady  31." 
[8] 


PREFACE 

In  any  one  season  in  the  popular  theatre  of  New 
York,  it  is  doubtful  if  there  are  presented  out  of  the 
two  hundred  or  so  annual  productions,  more  than  five 
or  six  at  most  that  are  prosperous  in  the  amusement 
of  a  man  tutored  to  a  point  of  skepticism  that  hic- 
coughs may  be  stopped  by  counting  slowly  up  to  one 
hundred.  For  the  major  part,  the  plays  presented 
are  melodramas  exhibiting  the  news  that  a  man's  bet- 
ter nature  plus  a  church-organ  will  inevitably  triumph 
over  his  impulse  to  short-change  the  cash  register; 
librettos  discovering  the  Atellan  juices  in  the  conceit 
that  married  Frenchmen  always  sneak  away  from 
their  wives  on  the  night  of  the  Quat'-z-Arts  ball  and 
that  the  wives,  accompanied  by  their  maids,  invari- 
ably track  after  them  and  make  them  jealous  by  flirt- 
ing with  Raoul,  the  huzzar;  and  problem  dramas 
demonstrating  that  every  time  a  married  woman  is 
on  the  point  of  embarking  on  the  Maurentic  with  her 
lover  she  is  at  the  last  moment  dissuaded  from  her 
purpose  by  the  falling  ill  of  her  baby  boy.  Nowhere, 
not  even  in  the  Metropolitan  Museum  of  Art,  may 
one  encounter  so  scintillating  an  array  of  mediocrity 
promulgated  in  so  pretentious  a  manner.  But  — 
"  Have  success,"  wrote  Edouard  Pailleron,  "  and 
there  shall  always  be  fools  to  say  that  you  have  tal- 
ent." And  so  it  has  come  about  that  the  theatre,  as 
we  of  the  American  today  know  it,  is  a  great  savanna 
of  successful  business  men  who  are  mistaken  for  and 
hailed  as  talented  producers  and  successful  showmak- 
ers  and  facemakers  who  are  mistaken  for  and  hailed 
respectively  as  talented  dramatists  and  actors. 

[This  condition  of  affairs  is,  of  course,   quickly 

[9] 


PREFACE 

traceable  to  the  radiant  gullibility  of  us  Americans, 
in  the  theatre  probably  as  nowhere  else.  No  worm- 
medicine  vendor,  exhorting  the  cross-road  yokel  with 
his  charmed  philtre,  had  ever  so  simple  a  constitu- 
ency. Let  some  Macdonald  Hastings  come  along 
with  direct  transcripts  from  the  speculations  of 
Rochefoucauld  which  he  places  into  play  form  and 
calls  "  The  New  SLi "  and  by  the  next  sunrise  the 
almanacs  are  rich  in  praise  of  a  famous  new  philoso- 
pher-dramatist. Let  some  A.  E.  Thomas  appear 
with  an  unacknowledged  counterpart  of  the  French 
play,  "  Son  Pere,"  which  he  announces  as  a  new  and 
original  comedy  called  "  The  Rainbow,"  and  for 
months  afterward  we  hear  paternosters  to  the  famous 
new  American  comedy  writer.  Let  some  clever 
showman  like  the  Frederic  Thompson  that  was,  a 
man  who  in  his  day  understood  well  this  native  gulli- 
bility and  shrewdly  catered  to  it,  have  his  press-agent 
announce  that  he  was  so  deep  a  believer  in  verisimili- 
tude that  he  actually  maneuvered  the  bunch-lights  in 
the  wings  in  such  wise  that  the  scenic  trees  would  cast 
changing  shadows  as  in  the  actual  sunlight,  and  from 
the  one  end  of  the  boulevard  to  the  other  spreads  the 
awe.  And  once  the  Broadway  species  of  fame,  the 
popular  species  of  reputation,  fastens  itself  upon  a 
person  of  the  theatre,  it  clings  like  a  leech  to  him, 
self-confirmed  and  irremovable.  The  foundation 
for  this  fame,  this  reputation,  matters  not.  It  may 
be  intrinsically  little  more  than  a  curl,  as  in  the  case 
of  some  Delia  Fox;  or  little  more  than  a  rumour  that 
the  peculiar  coiffure  is  designed  to  hide  missing  ears, 
as  in  the  case  of  some  Cleo  de  Merode;  or  little 
[10] 


PREFACE 

more  than  a  pair  of  aphrodisiac  eyes  or  pink  pajamas 
or  sightly  limbs.  Yet  fame  proceeds  from  the  wake 
of  each,  a  fame  that  overshadows  mere  genuine  tal- 
ent, mere  authentic  skill. 

Thus,  the  fame  of  Mary  Anderson  sprang  less 
from  her  considerable  ability  as  an  actress  than  from 
her  reputation  for  being  a  virtuous  woman ;  the  fame 
of  Mrs.  James  Brown  Potter  less  from  her  talent 
than  from  her  spectacular  matrimonial  alliance  with 
an  affluent  and  tony  New  Yorker;  the  fame  of  Rich- 
ard Mansfield  less  from  his  fine  performances  upon 
the  stage  than  from  his  private  Pullman  and  the  tales 
of  his  temperamental  didoes  in  the  wings;  and  the 
fame  of  William  Gillette  less  from  his  unmistakable 
dexterity  in  the  fashioning  of  adroit  farce  and  melo- 
drama than  from  the  report  that  he  had  consumption 
and  took  long  walks  at  two  A.  M.  in  the  solitude  of 
Central  Park.  And  what  was  true  yesterday  is  even 
more  true  today.  Idiosyncrasy  and  talent  are  as 
often  confounded  as  monetary  success  and  talent. 
Hang  the  stage  with  strips  of  tar-paper  and  hang  the 
strips  of  tar-paper  with  small  slices  of  Salami  and 
you  are  hailed  a  great  innovator  in  the  matter  of 
scenic  embellishment.  Illuminate  brightly  with  nu- 
merous baby  spotlights  the  faces  of  the  actors  in  a 
scene  calling  for  a  pitch  dark  dungeon  and  you  are 
celebrated  as  a  master  producer.  Take  a  trifle 
longer  over  your  make-up  box  and  cuckoo  the  per- 
formance of  Irving  in  "  Waterloo  "  and  you  are 
chaired  as  a  magnificent  actor. 

But,  slowly,  the  young  idea  is  creeping  into  the 
theatre.  And,  slowly,  the  old  frauds,  and  the  way 


PREFACE. 

of  estimating  them,  are  being  backed  out  of  the  stage 
door.  Not  that  youth,  and  the  changes  that  youth 
inevitably  brings  with  it,  are  automatically  ever  for 
the  better.  But  this  youth  that  is  coming  into  the 
American  playhouse  has  about  it  a  pleasant  air,  and 
one  that  augurs  well.  It  is  slowly  giving  us  new 
dramatists  of  ability  in  the  place  of  the  famous  char- 
latans we  have  come  to  know;  it  is  gradually  giving 
us  new  producers  of  skill  and  vision  and  education  in 
the  place  of  the  celebrated  Philistines.  And  it  is 
quite  possible  that  in  time  —  it  may  be  ten  years,  it 
may  be  twenty  —  it  will  give  us  also,  out  of  its  better 
labours,  a  new  and  a  finer  audience  in  the  place  of  the 
present  herd  of  hallelujahing  song-writers,  motion 
picture  actors  and  Broadway  bounders  whose  illiter- 
ate voice  is  the  voice  of  the  illiterate  audience  whose 
voice  in  turn  is  the  illiterate  voice  of  our  native  popu- 
lar theatre. 


Contents 


PAGE 

PREFACE  7 

THE  POPULAR  THEATRE  17 

ITS  PLAYS  30 

ITS  BROADWAY  AND  ITS  PLAYWRIGHTS  40 

ITS  AUDIENCES  54 

ITS  ADAPTATIONS  AND  ITS  COPEAUS  67 

ITS  Music  SHOWS  80 

ITS  CRITICISM  89 

ITS  IMAGINATION  100 

ITS  COMEDIANS  114 

ITS  MOTION  PICTURES  122 

ITS  ACTORS  146 

ITS  FIRST  NIGHTS  160 

ITS  TYPICAL  SEASON  169 

ITS  "  BIG  TIME  "  VAUDEVILLE  192 

ITS  "  SMALL  TIME  "  VAUDEVILLE  203 

WHAT  ITS  PUBLIC  WANTS  214 

IN  CONCLUSION  226 


The 
Popular  Theatre 


PROPERTY  OF 
.  DEPARTMENT  OF  DRAMATIC  ART 

Chapter  One:  The  Popular  Theatre 

To  an  appreciable  extent,  the  persistent  pov- 
erty of  our  national  stage  may  be  said  to  be  due 
to  the  dissemination  and  promiscuous  swallow- 
ing of  the  second-hand  theory  of  such  well-mean- 
ing but  nai've  old  gentlemen  as  the  Messrs. 
Brander  Matthews,  Richard  Burton  and  troupe,  the 
theory,  to  wit,  that  the  theatre  is  essentially  a  demo- 
cratic institution  and  must  so  remain  or  perish  from 
the  earth.  Imposing  structures  of  conscientious 
piffle  have  been  reared  upon  this  foundation.  The 
gospel  has  been  hung  around  the  neck  of  the 
college  boy,  disembogued  in  the  lecture  chamber, 
cuckooed  by  the  Drama  Leaguers.  And  yet,  at 
bottom,  one  finds  it  as  absurd  and  inutile  as  the 
paragrandine  or  the  New  York  State  Adultery  Act. 
Not  absurd  and  inutile,  true  enough,  when  trajected 
and  practised  by  the  frank  hawker  of  theatrical 
asafoetida,  but  worse  than  absurd  and  inutile  when 
exhibited  by  the  critic  or  commentator  professing 
a  cultural  standard  somewhat  above  that  obtaining 
in  a  young  girls'  finishing  school  or  Columbia  Uni- 
versity. 

From  any  plane  of  aesthetic  criticism  higher  than 
that  from  which  one  appraises  the  literature  of  Mrs. 
E.  Burke  Collins,  the  art  of  Austin  O.  Spare  and 
Frederick  Carter,  the  music  of  Charles  K.  Harris, 

[17] 


THE  POPULAR   THEATRE 

the  drama  of  R.  C.  Carton  —  or  the  dramatic 
criticism  of  such  Drama  League  bell-wethers  —  the 
/theatre  is  to  be  necessarily  regarded  as  an  institu- 
I  tion  of  an  essential  aristocracy :  an  aristocracy  of 
I  beautiful  letters,  of  ideas  and  wit,  of  viewpoint  and 
\philosophy.  To  hold  the  contrary,  to  hold  the 
theatre  a  mere  recess  pasture  for  the  potwallopers, 
a  suave  dive  for  the  proletarian  taste  on  the  loose, 
is  to  make  shift  to  establish  and  appraise  an  art  in 
terms  of  the  number  of  its  admirers  —  to  place  a 
lithograph  of  Mr.  Fatty  Arbuckle  above  Rem- 
brandt's portrait  of  Turenne,  "  The  Very  Idea  " 
above  Rittner's  "  En  Route,"  or  the  autopsies  of 
Rabindranath  Tagore  above  those  of  Rammohun- 
Roy.  If  it  be  true  that  the  theatre  is  intrinsically 
a  popular  institution,  a  saloon  for  the  locofocos, 
then  it  is  equally  true  —  and  clearly  —  that  the 
dramatic  criticism  concerned  with  this  institution 
must  amount  to  little  more  than  a  rebabbling  of 
the  mob  esteems  and  projection  and  coronation  of 
the  mob  criteria.  And,  being  from  this  point  of 
view  true,  one  doubtless  discovers  here  an  account- 
ing for  the  emptiness  and  banality  of  such  dramatic 
criticism  as  the  curriculacocci  periodically  unload 
upon  the  public  prints. 

From  that  side  of  the  theatre  which  has  been 
regarded  as  democratic,  there  has  come  down  to  us 
most  of  the  rant  and  jabber,  most  of  the  pish  and 
platitude,  that  in  very  slightly  disguised  form  con- 
trives still  to  overawe  and  enchant  the  pleasure- 
seeking  skipjack  and  confound  any  man  who  has 
arrived  at  a  sufficient  altitude  of  scholarship  to  be 
[18] 


THE  POPULAR   THEATRE 

able  to  differentiate  between  Meyerbeer  and  Schlitz's. 
From  that  side  has  come  the  stuff  of  such 
as  D'Ennery  and  Cormon,  Bulwer-Lytton,  Sardou, 
John  M.  Morton,  Mrs.  Henry  Wood,  Dumas  ills, 
Boucicault  —  the  "Two  Orphans,"  the  "  Toscas," 
the  "  East  Lynnes,"  the  "  Camilles "  and  the 
"  Boxes  and  Coxes."  From  the  side  of  aristocracy, 
from  the  theatre  designed  originally  for  the  few, 
have  come  the  Molieres,  whose  Palais-Royal  com- 
pany was  authorized  "  the  troupe  of  the  King," 
the  Shakespeares,  who  came  under  the  patronage 
of  the  circles  of  King  James  and  Elizabeth,  the 
Ibsens,  who  had  to  look  to  an  artist  of  the  violin 
for  their  first  practical  theatrical  encouragement 
and  who  "  had  to  make  their  way  against  the  dull- 
est and  most  disheartening  of  mob  influences,"  the 
Hauptmanns,  who  were  given  to  the  theatre  in  the 
cradle  of  the  anti-herd  Freie  Bu'hne  of  Otto  Brahm 
and  Paul  Schlenther,  and  on  down  the  list  to  the 
Bernard  Shaws  of  the  moment  who,  for  their  first 
hearings,  have  had  to  rely  on  private  societies  and 
closed  doors.  The  democratic  theatres  have  been 
the  theatres  of  Sir  Augustus  Harris  and  Daniel 
Frohman;  the  aristocratic  theatres  those  of  Stanis- 
lawsky  and  Dantschenko,  Andre  Antoine  and  Lugne 
Poe,  Max  Halbe  and  Josef  Ruderer.  The  demo- 
cratic theatre  of  our  more  recent  America  has  given 
us,  as  among  its  most  popular  examples,  "  Way 
Down  East,"  "  The  Old  Homestead  "  and  "  Ex- 
perience." This  same  democratic  theatre  has  given 
us,  as  among  its  most  summary  failures,  the  plays 
of  Molnar,  Brieux,  Hauptmann,  Galsworthy,  Brig- 

[19], 


THE   POPULAR    THEATRE 

house,  Donnay,  Hervieu,  Capus,  Bahr,  Chester- 
ton. .  .  . 

Statistics  are  the  refuge  of  the  unimaginative. 
I  shall  refrain  from  physicking  you  with  the  one 
hundred  and  one  chronicles  that,  like  a  witch's  wand 
out  of  Grimm,  transform  the  professor-critics  into 
so  many  asclepiadacea.  I  shall  omit  a  recording 
of  such  statistics  as  concern  the  Moscow  Artistic 
Theatre,  that  amazingly  successful  and  tonic  insti- 
tution which  was  based  on  the  theory  of  exclusive- 
ness  and  insured  that  exclusiveness  by  being  among 
other  things  the  most  expensive  of  Russian  play- 
houses, its  admission  fees  surpassing  the  charges 
even  of  the  Imperial  Theatres.  Or  of  such  statis- 
tics as  relate  to  the  so-called  undemocratic  private 
theatres  of  the  Enemy  Nation,  happy  enterprises 
that  have  borne  the  torch  of  a  finer  and  better  drama 
into  the  Teutonic  conscience  and  the  consciences  of 
further-flung  countries  —  the  theatres  of  such  as 
Reinhardt,  Grube,  Dumont  and  Lindemann;. 
Every  one  save  the  professor-critics  must  already 
be  privy  to  such  dry  news  of  the  yesterdays.  .  .  . 
The  critic  who  in  this  day  views  the  theatre  as  a 
popular  institution  is  the  critic  who  views  the  novel 
as  a  popular  institution,  and  so  holds  Miss  Leona 
Dalrymple  a  more  accomplished  and  accomplishing 
craftsman  than  Anatole  France,  Enrico  Butti  or 
Joseph  Conrad.  .  .  .  Art  is  ever  a  butler  in  Childs'. 

But  there  is  small  call  for  the  professorial 
cameriere  to  worry.  Our  theatre  remains  perfectly 
safe  for  the  mob.  For  one  evening  with  Shaw  at 
even  his  worst  ("Misalliance"),  one  evening  the 
[20] 


THE   POPULAR    THEATRE 

humour  of  which  is  at  least  derived  from  characters 
falling  upon  one  another's  ideas  instead  of  upon 
their  own  plump-places,  there  is  still  a  luxuriance  of 
procursive  epilepsies  in  which  imprisoned  emotional 
actresses  bang  and  bawl  vainly  for  help  against 
locked  doors,  with  a  telephone  in  plain  sight  not  two 
feet  away  ("Branded"),  and  in  which  ("  Lom- 
bardi,  Ltd.")  a  hot-blooded  Italian  magnificently 
declines  to  kiss  his  beloved  until  she  is  duly  married 
to  him. 

In  a  popular  theatre,  the  best  in  drama  'and 
dramatic  literature  must  inevitably  fail.  In  a 
popular,  or  mob,  theatre,  there  can  prosper  no  satire, 
for  satire  presupposes  a  blase  mind  and  attitude, 
whereas  the  mob  mind  and  attitude  are  ever  the 
mind  and  attitude  of  a  child  looking  into  a  shop 
window  at  Christmastime,  dismayed  at  the  wonders 
of  paint  and  tinsel.  Satire  inverts  the  popular 
opinion  and  pours  the  sawdust  out  of  that  opinion. 
To  the  popular  opinion,  therefore,  satire  is,  clearly 
enough,  incomprehensible,  unintelligible.  The 
popular  play  is  that  play  which  pours  the  sawdust 
not  out,  but  in;  the  play  that  enthrones  ignorance, 
flatters  unfounded  vanity;  the  play,  in  short,  that 
stuffs  the  greatest  amount  of  excelsior  into  the  wax 
doll.  So,  too,  straightforward  psychology  must 
fail,  straightforward  transcription  of  moods,  feel- 
ings and  reactions,  for,  save  in  the  more  primitive 
forms  of  melodrama  and  farcical  comedy,  the  mob 
is  stranger  to  the  characters  of  authentic  drama  and 
anaesthetic  to  their  impulses,  thoughts  and  deport- 
ment. In  a  country  like  our  own,  where  the  average 

[21] 


THE  POPULAR   THEATRE 

man  thinks  himself  a  devil  when  the  manicurist,  on 
finishing  her  chore,  gives  him  a  familiar  little  tap 
on  the  hand,  it  is  unlikely  that  a  brilliant  searching 
into  the  pathology  of  amour,  such,  for  example,  as 
is  instanced  in  that  excellent  scene  in  Act  II  of  "  Over 
the  'Phone,"  will  meet  with  appreciation  or  under- 
standing. Schnitzler  is  not  for  the  man  in  whose 
veins  flows  the  hot  tzigane  blood  of  Pottstown,  Pa. 
De  Curel  is  not  for  the  woman  the  supreme  pas- 
sion of  whose  life  has  consisted  in  an  ocular  liaison 
with  the  celluloid  ghost  of  Mr.  Francis  X.  Bushman, 
nor  John  Galsworthy  for  the  otherwise  good  citizen 
whose  idea  of  dramatic  literature  is  anything  with 
a  pistol  in  it. 

The  popular  theatre,  the  world  over,  is  a  theatre 
whose  constituents  are  interested  solely  in  such 
dramatic  pieces  as  reflect  their  own  thoughts  and 
emotions,  as  repeat  to  their  ears  those  things  they 
already  know  and  feel.  To  determine  the  quality 
of  the  popular  theatre,  therefore,  it  is  but  necessary 
to  catalogue  the  qualities  of  the  audience  of  that 
theatre.  What,  for  example,  does  the  average 
native  theatre  audience  believe?  Not  the  above- 
the-average  audience  one  encounters  periodically 
when  a  play  of  merit  dawns  upon  the  community, 
but  the  audience  one  sees  nightly  in  the  average 
show-shop  of  commerce  ?  In  the  first  place,  the  sum 
total  of  its  book  knowledge  —  I  think  I  am  not 
too  unfair — is  probably  that  of  the  public  high- 
school  pupil  in  his  second  scholastic  year.  In  the 
second  place,  the  sum  total  of  its  worldly  knowl- 
edge is  probably  that  of  the  average  moderately 

[22] 


THE  POPULAR   THEATRE 

well-to-do  suburban  shopkeeper.  In  the  third  place, 
the  sum  total  of  its  emotional  and  aesthetic  adven- 
ture may  be  approached  in  terms  of  a  composite  of 
professional  baseball  game,  phonograph,  street-car 
flirtation  and  California  claret.  In  the  fourth  place, 
the  sum  total  of  its  common  faith  may  be  indicated, 
impressionistically,  in  its  belief  that  the  farmer  is 
an  honest  man  and  greatly  imposed  upon;  that 
morality  consists  in  the  repeal  of  physiology  by  law; 
that  a  sudden  chill  is  a  sign  that  somebody  is  walk- 
ing over  one's  grave;  that  some  ignoble  Italian  is 
at  the  bottom  of  every  Dorothy  Arnold  fugax;  that 
all  male  negroes  can  sing;  that  a  tarantula  will  not 
crawl  over  a  piece  of  rope;  that  millionaires  always 
go  to  sleep  at  the  opera;  that  Paderewski  can  get 
all  the  pianos  he  wants  for  nothing;  that  Gavarni 
was  a  composer  and  Debureau  a  painter;  that 
minestra  is  the  name  of  a  particular  kind  of  Italian 
soup;  that  Henry  James  never  wrote  a  short  sen- 
tence ;  and  that  all  dachshunds  come  from  Germany. 
The  theatrical  stimuli  to  which  this  audience  gives 
emotional  response  are  correlatively  ingenuous. 
Any  scene,  however  badly  written,  in  which  an  actor 
comes  out  on  the  stage  carrying  a  dog  that  is  sup- 
posed to  have  been  run  over  by  a  motor-car  driven 
by  the  villain,  will  set  the  audience  to  polyphonous 
sniffling  and  to  an  almost  audible  vituperation  of 
the  heinous  chauffeur.  And  any  scene, .  however 
crude,  that  exhibits  an  inebriated  gentleman  in  the 
act  of  disrobing  for  bed  without  removing  his  top 
hat,  will  with  equal  certainty  brew  a  series  of  amaz- 
ing guffaws.  It  is  needless  to  elaborate  on  this 

[23] 


THE  POPULAR    THEATRE 

theme:  if  you  search  for  further  examples,  I  refer 
you  to  one  of  the  best  treatises  on  the  subject  that  has 
ever  come  to  my  attention,  a  treatise  which  appears 
in  a  volume  of  admirable  critical  papers  entitled 
"  Another  Book  on  the  Theatre."  But  the  facts  are 
plain,  and  unmistakable.  A  first-rate  play  is  four 
times  in  five  doomed  by  these  tokens  to  failure  in  the 
mob  theatre. 

I  speak  here  not  alone  of  our  American  mob 
theatre.  The  outstanding  mob  theatre,  in  almost 
any  country  one  elects,  is  comparatively  the  theatre 
of  parageusia,  the  barrack  of  balderdash,  the  cow- 
house of  art.  The  mob  theatre  of  London  dis- 
gorges "  The  Man  Who  Stayed  at  Home  "  and 
"Mr.  Wu"  and  "Bella  Donna."  The  esoteric 
theatre  of  London,  typified  by  such  institutions  as 
the  Incorporated  Stage  Society  and  the  Play  Actors, 
gives  us  "  Change "  and  "  Points  of  View," 
"  Chains  "  and  u  The  Polygon  " —  the  plays  of  men 
like  Shaw  and  Francis,  Moore  and  Yeats,  Brighouse 
and  Bennett,  in  the  place  of  plays  by  such  Strand 
Ibsens  as  Cecil  Raleigh  and  Bernard  Fagan.  The 
mob  theatre  of  Paris  gives  us  "  Samson,"  "  La 
Rampe "  and  "  La  Flambee " ;  the  aristocratic 
theatre,  "  Barbarine  "  and  Bruneau's  "  Faute  de 
1'Abbe  Mouret "  out  of  Zola,  and  "  L'Eau  de  Vie." 
The  mob  theatre  of  Berlin  unloads  such  so-called 
crook  and  bull  plays  as  "  Piquebube '.'  and  "  Excel- 
lenz  Max  ";  the  theatre  of  the  elect  provides  Haupt- 
mann  and  Wedekind  and  Ludwig  Thoma.  In  the 
mob  theatre  of  Vienna  we  find  such  militant,  ob- 
streperous twaddle  as  August  Riemer's  "  Austria 

[24] 


T.HE  POPULAR   THEATRE 

Has  All  the  Virtues  " ;  in  the  aristocratic  theatre, 
Felix  Salten.  I  allude  in  these  latter  instances, 
clearly  enough,  to  what  is  confessedly  the  mob  the- 
atre, for  in  all  countries  save  the  Anglo-Saxon  — 
whether  in  Russia  or  France  or  Italy  or  in  the  enemy 
lands  —  the  essentially  popular  theatre  is  overshad- 
owed by  the  theatre  of  suavity  and  distinction.  Yet 
the  mob  theatre,  wherever  you  find  it  and  when  find  it 
you  do,  is  the  theatre  of  lost  ideals.  .  .  .  Laugh  how 
you  will  at  the  lamented  New  Theatre  of  New  York, 
but  the  truth  about  that  theatre  is  that,  during  the 
period  of  its  initial  isolations  and  snobberies,  it  pro- 
duced more  good  plays  than  were  ever  produced  dur- 
ing a  like  period  in  the  history  of  any  other  American 

playhouse. 

*     *     * 

Among  plays  that  tend  to  make  the  local  theatre 
unsafe  for  the  multitude  one  finds  occasionally  such 
a  manuscript  as  the  "  Misalliance  "  of  Shaw.  Be- 
tween the  acts  of  this  play,  my  colleague,  Mr.  Clay- 
ton Hamilton,  proclaimed  to  me  that  if  ever  he 
wrote  a  play  so  deficient  in  the  matter  of  structural 
technique,  he  hoped  I  would  shoot  him.  Now,  I 
am  fond  of  Hamilton,  and  I  am  not  disposed  to  shoot 
him  until  his  turn  comes  (there  are  something  like 
five  colleagues  on  the  waiting  list  ahead  of  him), 
but  I  am  always  willing  to  oblige  a  friend. 
Especially  when  he  so  mistakes  a  remarkable  pro- 
ficiency in  structural  technique  for  a  deficiency.  The 
truth  about  Shaw,  of  course,  is  that  he  understands 
the  accepted  structural  technique  so  well  that  he  is 
able  to  discard  it.  The  best  business  man  in  the 


THE  POPULAR   THEATRE 

theatre  today  (I  refer  you  to  his  illuminating  cor- 
respondence with  Harold  Brighouse),  he  appreciates 
that  what  makes  money,  in  the  theatre  is  novelty, 
and  that  since  the  accepted  play-writing  technique 
lacks  novelty,  the  best  way  to  make  money  is  to 
reject  that  technique  and  substitute  for  it  a  technique 
that  is  unusual  and  unconventional.  Shaw  has  made, 
to  date,  two  hundred  and  twenty  thousand  dollars 
out  of  the  theatre.  His  royalties  are  fifteen  per 
cent.,  flat,  of  the  gross  —  and  they  have  come  to  him 
at  this  rate  from  America,  England,  Germany, 
France,  Austria  and  Russia.  And,  while  making 
this  money,  he  has  at  the  same  time  made  a  strik- 
ing reputation  for  himself  as  the  wittiest,  freshest 
and  the  most  unusual  dramatic  author  of  his  time. 
And  how  has  he  done  these  things?  He  has  done 
them,  very  simply,  by  doing  what  no  one  else  has 
been  doing.  To  believe  that  Shaw,  who  has  been 
writing  for  the  theatre  for  twenty  years,  who  is  a 
man  of  education  and  vision,  and  who  is  the  leading 
dramatist  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  theatre  —  to  believe 
that  this  man  has  tried  vainly  to  master  the  sort 
of  structural  technique  that  such  a  Piccadilly  bunk- 
butcher  as  Horace  Annesley  Vachell  contrived  easily 
to  master  at  the  first  crack,  is  indeed  a  job  for  the 
super-yogi. 

It  is  claimed  by  some  that  did  Shaw  understand 
the  technique  which  he  currently  foregoes,  his  plays 
would  be  better  plays.  In  other  words,  that  if  he 
wrote  his  plays  in  accordance  with  the  ritual  of 
Sardou  or  Emile  Augier,  those  plays  would  be 
greatly  improved.  To  me,  at  least,  this  seems  much 

[26] 


THE  POPULAR    THEATRE 

like  arguing  that  Richard  Strauss'  songs  for  baritone 
and  orchestra  would  be  much  better  if  the  composer 
had  written  them  after  the  formulae  of  Verdi,  or 
that  Paul  Cezanne  were  a  more  agreeable  painter 
did  he  emulate  the  feminine  perfumeries  of  Henner. 
That  Shaw  understands  perfectly  the  technique  of 
the  theatre  is  evident  to  anyone  who  cares  to  go  to 
the  trouble  of  studying  closely  his  plays,  and  their 
effect  upon  a  theatrical  audience.  If  ever  there  lived 
a  so-called  sure-fire  dramatist,  Shaw  is  that  man. 
(Ref.  Lecture  III,  Augustin  Hamon,  Faculte  des  Let- 
tres  de  I'Universite  de  Paris.)  "  Your  technique," 
Hamon  has  written  to  Shaw,  "  is  that  of  the  great 
comic  writers  of  the  ancient  Greeks  and  Latins  of  the 
Middle  Ages,  of  the  Elizabethan  period,  of  Moliere, 
of  Le  Sage  and  of  Beaumarchais.  And  your  tech- 
nique is  that  of  these  latter  by  reason  of  your  comic 
wit.  And  in  the  future,  no  one  will  be  able  to  write  a 
high  comedy  of  ideas  and  of  characters  without  using 
this  technique  which  is  inherent  and  necessary  to  this 
form  of  comedy."  But  more  than  this,  Shaw  has 
brought  to  this  technique  an  executive  showmanship 
doubtless  hitherto  unmatched  in  the  instance  of  a 
first-rate  man  of  the  theatre.  He  is  at  once  an  artist 
and  an  excellent  business  man,  a  mixture  of  Royal 
Academician  and  Gimbel  Brothers. 

That  Shaw  understands  thoroughly  the  sure-fire 
of  the  theatre,  the  most  positively  provocative  de- 
vices, and  that  he  adroitly  employs  these  devices 
on  the  numerous  occasions  when  the  dollar-grabber 
in  him  gets  the  better  of  the  artist,  should  be  mani- 
fest to  anyone  who  has  observed  even  a  small  part 

[27] 


THE   POPULAR    THEATRE 

of  his  work.  When  he  makes  Dudgeon  strut  like 
a  hero,  the  laugh  is  as  sure-fire  as  when  Richard 
Harding  Davis  makes  Willie  Collier  strut  like  a  hero 
in  the  last  act  of  "  The  Dictator."  The  drunk 
Patiomkin  in  "  Great  Catharine  "  is  as  sure-fire  a 
laugh-getter  as  the  drunk  Leon  Errol  in  "  Hitchy- 
Koo  " ;  the  allusion  to  the  portly  Mrs.  Warren  as 
a  sparrow  as  sure  as  the  allusion  to  the  chamber- 
maid in  "  Mary's  Ankle"  as  a  cheese;  the  sudden 
propulsion  of  Edstaston  upon  his  rearo  as  sure  as 
the  similar  business  disclosed  upon  the  stage 
of  the  Columbia  Theatre.  He  is  privy  to  the 
guffaw-sesame  of  the  cuss  word;  of  the  re- 
peated mispronunciation  of  a  character's  name, 
as  with  the  Szczepanowska  in  "  Misalliance," 
a  sure-fire  device  that  was  one  of  the  Hoyt 
standbys  and  is  currently  relied  upon  by  such  com- 
iques  as  Raymond  Hitchcock  and  George  Munroe; 
of  word  reiteration,  as  in  "  Candida,"  after  the 
manner  of  Sam  Bernard's  "  Sufficiency";  of  the  ir- 
relevant employment  of  precise  language  in  a  slang 
situation,  as  in  the  case  of  a  De  Wolf  Hopper  cur- 
tain speech;  of  the  mimicry  of  one  character  by  an- 
other, as  in  "  You  Never  Can  Tell,"  a  trick  be- 
ing used  currently  at  the  end  of  the  first  act  of 
"  Business  Before  Pleasure,"  and  gaining  the  loudest 
laugh  of  the  season.  He  is  privy,  too,  to  the  ir- 
resistible tear  that  lurks  ever  in  the  scene  of  leave- 
taking  (as  in  "  Caesar  and  Cleopatra  "),  and  in  the 
scene  of  sympathetic  rejection  of  an  ill-favoured 
suitor  (as  in  "  Candida  ") .  And  he  knows,  as  well, 
the  sure-fire  trick  of  smashing  glass  ("  Mis- 

[28] 


THE   POPULAR    THEATRE 

alliance  "),  the  trick  of  melodramatic  bugle-calls  and 
stabbings  and  general  hullaballoo  ("Caesar  and 
Cleopatra"),  the  trick  of  suave  smut  (there  is  a 
startling  example  in  "Misalliance"),  the  trick  of 
sensational  smut  ("  Mrs.  Warren  "),  and  the  trick 
of  bringing  on  the  marines  of  the  U.  S.  S.  Santiago 
to  rescue  the  hero  in  the  grand  finale  ("  Brass- 
bound"). 

Imagine  a  man  like  this,  a  man  admitted  to  be 
one  of  the  two  greatest  living  dramatists,  a  man 
whose  plays  have  been  done  in  every  civilized  country 
under  the  sun,  a  man  whose  vision  is  the  best  in  all 
England,  a  man  whose  influence  has  been  felt  in 
every  theatre  save  the  theatre  of  Spain  and  Italy  — 
imagine  such  a  man,  mon  tres  cher  Hamilton,  being 
unable  to  write,  if  write  he  would,  the  technically 
exact  sort  of  plays  written  by  Mr.  Willard  Mack! 


[29] 


Chapter  Two:  Its  Plays 

That  the  popular  play  is  by  sound  standards 
ninety-nine  times  in  one  hundred  a  bad  play  is 
a  scandal  long  since  interred  in  the  P's  under 
Platitude.  But,  save  for  the  occasional  vague 
theorizing  of  the  theatrical  anchorites  who  pass 
for  authorities  on  the  drama  in  the  one-building  uni- 
versities, the  reasons  for  the  automatic  badness  of 
the  popular  play  are  rarely  inquired  into.  And  when 
these  reasons  are  inquired  into,  they  are  invariably 
either  jocosely  diverted  with  some  such  observation 
as  that  the  popular  play  must  reflect  the  intel- 
lectual sophistication  of  a  public  forty-nine  out  of 
fifty  of  whose  individuals  believe  that  a  cinder  may 
be  removed  from  one  eye  by  massaging  the  other, 
or  suffocated  with  some  such  collegiate  pastille  as 
"  Even  the  most  cultured  and  intellectual  of  men 
when  he  forms  an  atom  of  a  crowd  loses  conscious- 
ness of  his  acquired  mental  qualities  and  harks  back 
to  his  primal  nakedness  of  mind;  the  dramatist, 
therefore,  because  he  writes  for  a  crowd,  writes  for 
an  uncivilized  and  uncultivated  mind." 

Each  of  these  amiable  attitudes  and  the  character- 
istic and  reminiscential  train  of  reasoning  it  produces 
is  alike  false  in  that  it  is  based  upon  the  assumption 
that  intellectuality  and  meritorious  drama  go  hand 

[30] 


ITS   PLAYS 

in  hand  and  that  the  popular  play  must  be  a  bad 
play  since  it  is  fashioned  to  appeal  to  a  crowd 
mechanically  or  otherwise  bereft  of  intellectuality. 
Nothing,  of  course,  could  be  further  from  the  truth. 
In  the  first  place,  there  is  generally  no  more  intellect- 
ual content  in  the  first-rate  play  than  in  the  hack  play 
designed  for  the  mob.  The  basic  philosophy  of  Ib- 
sen's "  The  Master  Builder "  is  indistinguishable 
from  that  of  Madeline  Lucette  Ryley's  "  Mice  and 
Men,"  precisely  as  the  basic  philosophy  of  Suder- 
mann's  "  Happiness  in  a  Corner  "  is  indistinguishable 
from  that  of  Fred  Jackson's  "  The  Naughty  Wife." 
Cosmo  Hamilton's  yokel-yanker,  "  The  Blindness  of 
Virtue,"  is  intrinsically  of  an  intellectual  piece  with 
Wedekind's  first-rate  "  Awakening  of  Spring,"  and 
Hemmerde  and  Neilson's  rabble  tickler,  "  The  But- 
terfly on  the  Wheel,"  is  of  the  same  fundamental 
metaphysic  as  Bjornson's  "  Geography  and  Love." 

Again,  such  first-rate  plays  as  Hauptmann's  "  The 
Weavers  "  and  Galsworthy's  "  Strife,"  both  prompt 
popular  failures,  are  of  so  intellectually  simple  a  na- 
ture that  they  are  within  the  grasp  of  even  the  most 
feeble  mob  intelligence,  whereas  such  specious,  defec- 
tive plays,  and  plays  promptly  popular,  as  Augustus 
Thomas'  "  Witching  Hour  "  and  Belasco's  "  Return 
of  Peter  Grimm  "  are  built  upon  themes  like  mental 
suggestion  and  the  domination  of  the  subsconscious 
that  assuredly  would  seem  to  be  mob  caviare. 
Brieux's  "  Les  Hannetons,"  Pinero's  '  Thunder- 
bolt," Echegaray's  "  El  Gran  Galeoto  "  and  any 
number  of  other  first-rate  distinctly  unpopular  plays 
are  intrinsically  of  a  psychodynamic  content  not 

[so 


THE   POPULAR    THEATRE 

nearly  so  difficult  of  agglomerate  digestion  as 
Locke's  "  Case  of  Becky,"  Thomas'  "  As  a  Man 
Thinks  "  and  any  number  of  other  eighth-rate  dis- 
tinctly popular  plays. 

Still  again,  a  first-rate  play  like  Galsworthy's 
"  Justice,"  written  by  an  artist  with  the  mob  far 
from  mind,  becomes  a  popular  play  where  a  tenth- 
rate  play  like  Megrue's  and  Cobb's  "  Under  Sen- 
tence," frankly  written  by  Broadway  for  Broad- 
way, and  retailing  the  same  theme  as  the  Gals- 
worthy work,  becomes  an  unpopular  play.  Bjorn- 
son's  "  The  Gauntlet,"  listed  by  the  professors  as 
an  unpopular  play  because  of  its  so-called  intellectual- 
ity, remains  still  an  unpopular  play  when  this  so- 
called  intellectuality  is  reduced  to  terms  of  Times 
Square  by  Rachel  Crothers  in  "  A  Man's  World." 
So,  too,  with  Tolstoi's  "  Living  Corpse  "  when  made 
into  the  more  transpicuous  Ditrichstein  version  of  the 
"  Temperamental  Journey,"  with  Bjornson's  "  Leon- 
arda  "  when  reduced  to  Kellett  Chambers'  "  The 
Right  to  Happiness,"  with  Brieux's  "  La  Foi  "  and 
Moody's  "  The  Faith  Healer "  when  reduced  to 
George  Cohan's  "  The  Miracle  Man,"  with  Her- 
vieu's  "  La  Loi  de  I'Homme  "  and  Geraldine  Bon- 
ner's  "  Sauce  for  the  Goose,"  with  Ibsen's  "  Pillars 
of  Society  "  and  Hurlbut's  "  The  Writing  on  the 
Wall,"  with  Hauptmann's  "  Lonely  Lives  "  and  Eu- 
gene Walters'  "  Just  a  Wife,"  with  Strindberg's 
"  Father  "  and  Paul  Armstrong's  "  Bludgeon  "... 

Out  of  this  topsy-turvy  it  would  appear  to  be  no 
facile  job  to  deduce  the  badness  of  the  popular  play 
on  grounds  of  absence  or  even  subordinacy  of  intel- 

[32] 


ITS  PLAYS 

lectuality.  And  so  we  turn  for  proof  to  the  profes- 
sorial theory  that  the  popular  play  is  a  bad  play  since 
it  is  written  for  the  mob,  and  since  the  mob  lowers 
automatically  the  intelligence  of  its  component  in- 
dividuals. Here,  for  all  the  sonorous  eloquence  of 
the  university  Dupins,  we  find  ourselves  afresh  con- 
founded. The  Le  Bon  and  Tarde  notion,  gobbled 
whole  by  the  jerkwater  Solomons,  to  the  effect  that 
the  collective  psychology  of  the  crowd  is  instrumental 
in  reducing  the  intelligence  and  poise  of  that  crowd 
to  the  lowest  common  denominator  is  more  often  any- 
thing but  true.  While  it  may  be  true  of  a  crowd  in 
a  gin-mill  or  circus  sideshow,  or  of  a  crowd  at  a  prize- 
fight or  dinner  party  or  dance,  it  is  worse  than  im- 
becile to  hold  it  true^  of  a  crowd  in  the  theatre  or  in 
an  art  gallery  or  at  a  symphony  concert.  Take  the 
lowest  type  of  crowd  imaginable,  the  type  in  which 
there  is  not  more  than  one  half-civilized  man  to 
every  hundred,  the  crowd,  for  example,  at  a  profes- 
sional baseball  game,  and  bundle  that  crowd  bag  and 
baggage  into  some  great  Carnegie  Hall  where  they 
are  playing  Beethoven's  Fifth.  What  would  hap- 
pen? At  first,  undoubtedly,  a  great  deal  of  loud 
snickering  and  oh  sassafras  and  bandying  of  sour 
mots  and  let's  get  the  hell  out  o'  this  morgue.  And 
what  then?  A  slowly  settling  mass,  a  crowd  gradu- 
ally —  very  gradually  perhaps  —  accommodating  it- 
self to  its  accursed  surroundings,  a  crowd  gradually 
shaming  itself  up  to  the  conduct  of  its  more  genteel 
and  more  cultured  and  more  disciplined  component 
parts  —  and  a  crowd  listening  at  length  if,  true 
enough,  not  entirely  with  interest  and  sympathy,  at 

[33] 


least   with    open   mind   and   in    respectful    silence. 

Such  a  mob,  instead  of  being  lowered  to  its  aver- 
age indecorum  and  stupidity,  as  the  professors  main- 
tain, is  rather  elevated  in  varying  degree  to  its  leaven 
of  gentility  and  intelligence.  The  intelligent  man  in 
a  mixed  crowd  retains  at  least  the  basic  share  of  his 
intelligence  and  the  yahoo  in  the  same  crowd  becomes 
more  or  less  uncomfortably  inoculated  with  that 
man's  intelligence.  Take  a  first-rate  play,  like 
Shaw's  "  Caesar  and  Cleopatra."  Fill  the  house 
with  twelve  intelligent  men  and  twelve  hundred 
noodles.  When  the  twelve  hundred  noodles  boo, 
do  the  twelve  intelligent  men  boo,  or  feel  like  boo- 
ing? But  when  the  twelve  intelligent  men  ap- 
plaud, is  it  not  a  fact  that  the  twelve  hundred  noodles, 
even  if  they  fail  to  join  in  or  fail  to  feel  like  joining 
in,  yet  become  inwardly  just  a  trifle  dubious  as  to 
their  own  apathy?  And  does  not  the  applause  of  the 
lonely  dozen  put  the  twelve  hundred  noodles  willy- 
nilly  in  a  slightly  more  hospitable  attitude  toward  the 
piece? 

But  here,  I  admit,  I  am  guilty  of  giving  the  toe 
to  one  theory  with  what  after  all  is  merely  another 
theory.  So  let  us  try  facts.  One  will  be  sufficient. 
The  notion  of  the  professors  that  a  theatrical  crowd 
is,  like  a  street-corner  gathering,  ever  a  mere  casual 
crowd,  and  that  it  may  so  be  used  as  a  stable  and  un- 
changing specimen  in  psychological  research,  is  based 
on  the  perfectly  obvious  delusion  that  the  crowds  that 
go  to  the  forty-odd  New  York  theatres  of  an  evening 
are  entirely  different  and  distinct  crowds  on  each  suc- 
ceeding evening  of  the  season.  The  opposite  is,  of 

[34] 


ITS  PLAYS 

course,  true.  The  theatrical  crowd  of  New  York, 
and  of  any  other  city,  big  or  small,  is  to  a  preponder- 
ant degree  a  fixed  and  sharply  defined  crowd,  a  crowd 
that  has  been  going  to  the  theatre  for  a  variable  num- 
ber of  years,  a  crowd  gradually  finding  its  tastes  pol- 
ished by  its  better  element,  and  so  presently  being 
graduated  from  the  slap-stick  farce  of  "  Charley's 
Aunt "  to  the  satiric  farce  of  de  Caillavet's  and  de 
Flers'  "  The  King,"  from  the  tin  piano  "  Earl  and 
the  Girl  "  to  the  melodious  "  Merry  Widow,"  from 
the  stodgy  slop  of  Charles  Klein  to  the  humour  of 
Clare  Kummer  and  the  wit  of  Jesse  Lynch  Willians. 
The  dramatist,  therefore,  because  he  writes  for  this 
crowd,  does  not  necessarily  write,  as  the  professors 
imagine,  for  a  fitfully  heterogeneous  auditorium 
mind,  crude,  untrained  and  refractory.  Hence,  since 
the  writers  of  the  popular  plays  do  not,  anyway, 
agree  with  the  professors  as  to  the  mediocrity  of  the 
crowd's  intellectual  attainments,  and  since  they  con- 
scientiously write  the  very  best  plays  they  know  to 
write,  the  reason  for  the  automatic  badness  of  the 
popular  play  is  not  to  be  found  here.  Where  then? 
Very  simply,  I  daresay,  in  the  automatic  badness  of 
the  theatre  itself.  The  theatre,  that  is,  as  potential 
bazaar  of  art. 

To  the  devastating  whims  of  the  theatre  the  first- 
rate  play  and  the  tenth-rate  play  are  equally  subject; 
and  if  the  former  play  suffers  less  and  less  often  than 
the  latter  play  it  is  simply  because  its  creator  happens 
by  nature  and  instinct  to  be  stubborn  and  independent 
artist  where  the  creator  of  the  bad  play  happens 
either  constitutionally  or  by  an  acquired  mental  cheap- 

[35] 


THE   POPULAR    THEATRE 

ness  to  be  a  conscious  or  unconscious  seeker  after 
mere  clap  and  coin.  But,  as  dramatists  pure  and 
simple,  as  workers  for  the  stage,  the  Gerhart  Haupt- 
manns  and  the  Eugene  Walters  are  handicapped  by 
the  same  arbitrary  theatrical  shortcomings  and 
idiosyncrasies  which  the  illuminated  platform  im- 
poses upon  them.  The  theory  that  the  Haupt- 
manns,  unlike  the  Walters,  write  their  plays  with  the 
acting  stage  far  from  mind  is  akin  to  the  theory  that 
Ibsen  unintentionally  revolutionized  dramatic,  which 
is  to  say  stage,  technique  by  intentionally  writing  his 
plays  primarily  for  the  library. 

Against  these  crude  impositions  and  impostures  of 
the  stage  the  artist  fights  more  sturdily  and  saga- 
ciously than  the  hack,  and  his  play  is  hence  most  often 
a  play  not  so  unavoidably  bad.  Bad,  that  is,  from 
the  viewpoint  of  a  sound  and  complete  work  of  art: 
in  comparison,  for  example,  with  a  sound  novel,  a 
sound  painting,  or  a  sound  piece  of  music.  Where 
the  novelist,  the  painter,  or  the  composer  faces  one 
rule,  the  dramatist  faces  a  dozen,  eight  of  which  are 
extrinsic  to  his  art,  and  all  of  which  are  at  best  half- 
crazy.  In  order  to  achieve  the  essential  theatrical 
unbroken  leg-work  on  the  part  of  his  actors,  Shakes- 
peare had  to  stoop  in  his  greatest  tragedy  to  the  bald- 
est of  bald  stage  artifices.  Barrie,  after  he  had  fin- 
ished "  Peter  Pan,"  had  arbitrarily  to  tinker  with  the 
perfectly  imagined  scene  of  his  well-planned  and 
well-executed  second  act  in  order  to  make  it  stage- 
worthy.  For  the  one  uncompromising  Hauptmann 
of  "  Lonely  Lives,"  there  are  the  two  stage  com- 
promising Hauptmanns  of  "  Griselda  "  and  "  Elga." 

[36] 


ITS  PLAYS 

Brieux  writes  "  La  Foi  "  to  the  full  of  his  imagina- 
tion and  then  is  forced  to  pull  in  his  reins  with  a 
malapropos  jerk  that  the  work  may  be  made  play- 
able. Imagine  cutting  three-quarters  of  an  hour  out 
of  the  reading  of  Conrad's  novel  "  Lord  Jim,"  as 
they  must  out  of  the  playing  of  Ibsen's  "  Wild 
Duck  "  to  fit  it  into  the  stage  scheme  of  things.  Im- 
agine a  stage  which  inexorably  makes  Shaw  chop  out 
the  best  part  of  his  "  Man  and  Superman." 

The  artist,  of  course,  fights  tooth  and  nail  against 
the  stage's  stupid  ritual  and  though  that  ritual,  for  all 
his  valour,  generally  gets  him  one  way  or  another  in 
the  end,  his  crucified  play  remains  yet  a  variably  good 
play  for  the  simple  reason  that,  unlike  the  mere  gack 
merchant,  he  has  declined  to  surrender  to  the  egre- 
gious ritual  without  something  of  a  scrap.  But, 
even  so,  the  pugnacious  spirit  of  the  artist-dramatist 
very  often  presently  dies,  and  he  realizes  the  futility 
of  the  fight,  and  hoists  a  white  flag  marked  but 
slightly,  for  personal  respect's  sake,  with  the  purple 
of  his  art.  Thus,  a  Pinero  surrenders  with  a 
"  Mind-the-Paint-Girl,"  a  Galsworthy  with  a  "  Fugi-, 
tive,"  a  Brieux  with  a  "  Damaged  Goods."  .  .  . 

The  frankly  popular  playmaker,  on  the  other 
hand,  hoists  the  milk-white  flag  immediately  he  gets 
on  his  uniform  and  before  he  can  see,  even  remotely, 
the  whites  of  the  enemy's  eggs.  He  declines  to  take 
any  chances  whatever.  He  appreciates,  and  accu- 
rately, that  the  law  of  the  theatre  and  its  stage  de- 
mands that  he  commit  a  thousand  and  one  artistic 
incongruities  and  absurdities  like  emotionalizing  a 
composition  generically  and  properly  unemotional, 

[37] 


THE   POPULAR    THEATRE 

like  making  active  an  essentially  passive  picture,  and 
like  inculcating  the  character  of  a  drone  with  a  quick, 
suspensive  interest,  and  so  he  goes  ahead  and  without 
further  ado  commits  them.  He  has  amiably  learned 
his  lesson,  not  out  of  his  own  experience,  but  out  of 
the  experiences  of  superior  artists  and  craftsmen. 
He  has  seen  that  the  difference  between  art  and  the 
drama  is  the  difference  between  "  Vanity  Fair,"  the 
novel,  on  the  one  side,  and  "  Vanity  Fair,"  the 
dramatized  novel,  on  the  other  —  even  where  the 
dramatization  is  the  work  of  a  playmaker,  himself 
an  artist,  like  Langdon  Mitchell  .  .  .  Conrad's 
"  Youth  "  is  a  work  of  art.  Is  a  playable  play,  treat- 
ing of  the  same  subject  and  treated  even  with  the 
same  great  artistry,  conceivable? 

The  popular  play,  therefore,  is  generally  a  bad 
play  for  the  same  reason  that  the  music  that  emanates 
from  a  mouth-harmonica  is  bad  music.  The  medium 
of  expression,  however  good  the  intentions  of  the 
performer,  is  too  primitive,  too  greatly  curtailed,  too 
insufficient.  The  drama,  good  or  bad,  is  an  art  in 
handcuffs.  And  the  degree  in  which  it  differs  is 
merely  the  degree  in  which  the  wrists  of  its  creator 
are  limber.  But,  good  or  bad,  it  is  an  art  bounded 
by  the  same  cramping  and  grotesque  frontiers,  on 
this  side  by  some  such  proscription  as  Aristotle's 
artistically  ironic  unities,  on  that  by  some  such 
coop  as  the  peremptory  drop-curtain,  on  this  again  by 
objective  action  and  on  that  again  by  over-emphasis 
of  so-called  "  plot."  That  a  Shakespeare  has  with 
high  success  flouted  certain  of  these  many  baroque 
limbos  and  that  a  Chekhov  has  with  moderate  success 

[38] 


ITS  PLAYS, 

flouted  certain  others  is  contention  of  a  kidney  with 
that  which  maintains  a  jail  to  be  an  institution  de- 
signed for  the  escape  of  its  inmates  on  the  ground 
that  once  in  a  blue  moon  some  virtuoso  of  the  can- 
opener  composes  for  himself  an  exit. 


[39] 


Chapter  Three:  Its  Broadway  and 
Its  Playwrights 

The  common  gymnastic  which  has  for  its  major 
gesture  the  blaming  of  Broadway,  and  what  Broad- 
way represents,  for  all  that  is  worst  in  the  American 
drama  is  grounded  on  a  fallacy  not  less  fantastic  than 
the  current  educational  philosophy  which  holds  it 
practicable  so  to  codify  a  youngster's  instruction  that 
he  shall  learn  nothing  save  that  which  will  be  useful 
to  him  in  his  adult  years.  The  bane  of  the  Ameri- 
can drama  is  not  Broadway,  but  Fifth  Avenue. 
Broadway,  and  the  essence  of  Broadway,  its  spirit 
and  aesthetic,  have  given  to  America  what  of  peculiar 
individuality  and  freshness  its  native  drama  pos- 
sesses, where  Fifth  Avenue  —  or  at  least  the  oblique 
influence  of  Fifth  Avenue  —  has  more  often  scuttled 
the  ship. 

The  majority  of  our  popular  playwriters  are,  by 
nativity  and  upbringing,  products  of  Broadway. 
This  one,  when  at  an  age  when  other  little  boys  were 
being  roundly  spanked  for  so  much  as  venturing  to 
ask  their  parents  just  what  it  was  Hannah  Elias  was 
doing  to  make  her  famous,  was  already  embellishing 
the  vaudeville  stage  and  swatting  his  father  on  the 
nose  with  a  newspaper  upon  an  exchange  of  double 
entente  on  the  Princess  Chimay.  And  that  one, 

[40] 


ITS   BROADWAY 

while  at  the  age  when  most  babies  are  still  having 
their  little  Keystones  tenderly  sprinkled  with  talcum, 
was  already  being  projected  violently  upon  his  from 
up  out  a  trap-door  in  one  of  David  Henderson's  ex- 
travaganzas. 

Of  such,  in  considerable  part,  our  American  play- 
composers:  grown-up  stage  children,  ex-ushers,  ex- 
callboys,  ex-actors,  ex-advance  agents.  And  where 
not  precisely  of  this  gender,  alumni  —  we  find  in 
Who's  Who  —  of  such  pertinent  literary  and  artistic 
callings  as  freight-train  conductor,  hotel  clerk,  car- 
penter, stock-broker,  circus  acrobat,  shop-keeper  and 
shoe  salesman.  Of  training  in  the  arts,  of  training 
in  the  graces  of  gentility  and  good  breeding,  of  the 
cultural  poise  and  outlook  that  come  from  careful 
preparation  and  careful  education  and  association 
with  the  finished  and  adventured  peoples  of  the 
world,  from  first  to  last  scarcely  a  trace,  scarcely  a 
clue.  Rather  a  sure  swagger,  a  knock-' em-out-of- 
their-seats  sort  of  artistry,  a  brash  but  not  unfacile 
command  of  the  elementary  hokums  of  the  theatre,  a 
loud  and  brazen,  yet  clever,  trading  in  the  biff-bang 
melodramatics  and  slam-bang  farce  stuffs  —  but  no 
reserve,  no  deliberation,  no  whimsey  nor  fancy  nor 
beauty. 

These  makers  of  plays  are  of  Broadway  even  be- 
fore first  they  come  to  Broadway.  What  Broadway 
is  and  what  Broadway  stands  for,  they  too  are  and 
they  too  stand  for.  The  spirit  of  their  early,  training 
has  been  not  the  quiet  spirit  of  appropriate  foods  and 
appropriate  guidance,  appropriate  books  and  schools 
and  companions,  but  the  spirit  of  street  slang,  of  pert 

[40 


THE   POPULAR    THEATRE 

insolence,  of  opinionated  bravado,  of  dollar  divinity. 
And  this  latter  training  they  have  brought  to  Broad- 
way, to  the  Broadway  that  glorifies  it  and  venerates 
it,  to  the  Broadway  that  is  itself  the  crystallization 
of  all  the  crude  native  superficialities  in  the  arts  — 
the  Broadway  that  knows  Schumann  only  as  the  in- 
spiration of  one  of  Planquette's  duets  in  "  The 
Chimes  of  Normandy,"  Titian  as  the  colour  of  Billie 
Burke's  hair,  and  Gourmont  as  a  possible  typograph- 
ical error  for  the  word  signifying  an  omnivorous 
feeder.  But  — 

And  here  we  engage  the  important  point  — 
Broadway  is  honest.  It  may  be,  in  the  way  some 
of  us  estimate  the  things  of  this  world,  uncouth  and 
shoddy  and  common,  but  it  is  without  snobbishness, 
without  spurious  delicacy,  without  simagree  and  false 
shame.  Its  spirit  is  cheap,  loud,  but  it  doesn't  pre- 
tend it  otherwise.  And  its  people,  though  an  ab- 
surd people,  are  withal  a  guileless  one:  the  species 
that  smokes  cigars  on  the  street,  wears  the  watch- 
chain  suspended  from  the  lapel  of  the  coat  and  re- 
gards Bernard  Shaw  and  H.  G.  Wells  as  radicals  — 
the  species  pistillate  that  would  grandly  demonstrate 
its  familiarity  with  the  French  tongue  by  losing  no 
opportunity  to  indulge  itself  in  the  droll  luxury  of 
pronouncing  the  name  as  Sarra  Bairnhar,  and  that 
would  emphasize  its  bienseance  and  unimpeachable 
status  of  lady  by  a  degage  pursing  of  its  lips  and  ele- 
vating of  its  eyebrows  as  it  sinks  with  a  great  display 
of  nonchalance  into  a  first-night  orchestra  chair. 
Yet  these,  intrinsically,  are  harmless  histrionics,  like 
those  of  so  many  little  girls  playing  "  society  "  in 

[42] 


ITS   BROADWAY 

their  mothers'  discarded  ball  gowns,  and  they  fool 
nobody  and  but  make  the  more  emphatic  the  artless- 
ness  and  naivete  that  lie  underneath  the  gaudy  pink 
and  purple  satins  and  amazing  decolletes  and  other 
such  manifestations  of  the  art  of  the  Forty-fifth 
Street  West  Callot  Soeurs  and  the  other  side-street 
Lanvins,  Cheruits  and  Poirets.  For,  fundamentally, 
Broadway  and  its  people,  for  all  their  untoward  ex- 
ternals and  protevangeliums,  are  children  gullibly 
agape  at  a  great  Christmas-tree,  dancing  and  shout- 
ing gleefully  over  the  tinsel  stars  and  salt-sprinkled 
cotton  snow  and  cornucopias  filled  with  lemon-drops. 
To  them  these  things  are  as  real:  the  tinsel  stars 
destined  to  illumine  the  night  of  the  world  and  the 
cornucopias  crammed  with  sweet  and  candied  apri- 
cots. .  .  .  Broadway  —  a  continuous  performance 
of  "  Peter  Pan  "  by  an  exceptionally  bad  provincial 
stock  company. 

Out  of  this  childish  quality,  and  doubtless  because 
of  it,  there  has  come  to  the  American  stage  what  is 
the  typical  American  drama,  a  drama  which,  though 
lacking  all  finish,  all  elegance,  all  worldly  philosophy 
and  penetration  and  distinction,  is  yet,  and  probably 
by  virtue  of  these  very  defects,  racy  of  the  nation 
and  emblematic  of  its  attitude,  its  specious  love  of 
externals,  its  graceless  hurry,  gawky  youth,  somewhat 
immodest  bluster  and  confidence.  In  this  drama,  the 
product  of  Broadway,  there  is  neither  the  quality  of 
reminiscence,  for  reminiscence  is  the  privilege  and 
estate  of  the  mind's  gentlemen,  nor  the  quality  of 
lives  and  loves  greatly  lived.  Nor  the  quality  of  a 
heartache  induced  by  something  other  than  a  declin- 

[43] 


THE  POPULAR    THEATRE 

ing  stock  market  or  the  stage  faithlessness  of  Flor- 
ence Reed.  Nor  the  quality  of  heart'sease  imparted 
otherwise  than  through  the  spectacle  of  a  seidlitz 
powder  ingenue  succumbing  ultimately  to  the  embrace 
of  Mr.  William  Courtenay,  or  an  alcoholic  pick- 
pocket yielding  at  length  to  the  potent  amending 
alchemy  of  peach  jam  and  a  canvas  backdrop  painted 
to  represent  a  bucolic  landscape. 

But  to  such  insight,  but  to  such  understanding  and 
appreciation  of  and  deep  sympathy  with  the  living 
things  of  this  life,  the  Broadway  playmaker,  say  what 
you  will  against  him,  makes  no  claim.  He  gives  him- 
self over,  instead,  to  the  things  he  does  understand, 
and  among  these  things  the  first  is  the  way  in  which  to 
amuse  and  entertain  the  countless  Americans  like 
himself  who  regard  the  theatre,  and  probably  not 
without  peculiar  reason,  as  a  refuge  from  art  and 
literature,  from  beauty  and  truth.  Who  regard  the 
theatre  as  an  institution  wherein  the  mirror  that 
might  be  held  to  nature  were  vastly  more  entertain- 
ingly employed  as  an  implement  wherewith  drolly 
to  paddle  the  comique  upon  his  antipodes,  and 
wherein  life  is  contemplated  chiefly  as  an  attempt  to 
outwit  the  vindictive  machinations  of  the  New  York 
police  force.  And  the  entertainments  the  Broadway 
playmaker  thus  provides  his  orchestra  effigies  and 
constituents  are  America's  distinctive  contributions 
to  the  dramatic  records  of  the  world,  as  distinctively 
American,  if  at  once  as  distinctively  unstimulating, 
inelegant  and  aesthetically  haggard,  as  ice-cream 
soda,  professional  baseball,  Billy  Watson's  Beef 
Trust  and  red-white-and-blue  handkerchiefs.  Mak- 

[44] 


ITS   BROADWAY 

ing  up  in  surface  cleverness,  novelty  and  breezy  gait 
what  they  lack  in  the  moods  and  manners  of  the  finer 
dramaturgy,  they  excel,  theatrically,  by  very  reason 
of  their  deficiencies.  For  where  it  is  a  matter  of 
loud  farce  or  loud  melodrama  or  trick  comedy,  the 
Broadway  playmaker  has  proved  in  the  last  half 
dozen  years  that  he  knows  more  about  his  trade,  and 
is  a  vastly  more  adroit  craftsman,  than  his  British 
or  Continental  competitor.  He  is  more  ingenious, 
more  sagacious  in  the  employment  of  his  crude  ma- 
terials and  still  cruder  philosophies,  and  the  plays 
he  builds  are  accordingly  not  only  more  ingenious 
plays  than  his  rivals  build  abroad,  but  at  the  same 
time  as  indelibly  #nd  symbolically  fragrant  of  the 
American  attitude  toward,  and  conception  of,  life 
and  art  and  morals  as  the  Saturday  Evening  Post. 

The  Broadway  play,  in  short,  is  the  representa- 
tive American  drama,  and  it  is  so  regarded  by  the 
critics  and  publics  of  London  and  the  capitals  of  con- 
tinental Europe.  The  typical  American  play  is  not 
a  play  of  the  quality  of  "  The  Poor  Little  Rich  Girl  " 
nor  "  Old  Lady  31  "  nor  "  The  Truth  "  nor  "  The 
New  York  Idea  "  (however  much  we  might  wish  it 
were),  but  a  play  like  "  Kick  In  "  or  "  Within  the 
Law  "  or  "  It  Pays  to  Advertise  "  or  "  Turn  to  the 
Right."  They  are  not  to  be  mistaken.  For  where 
;'  The  Poor  Little  Rich  Girl  "  might  conceivably  have 
been  written  by  Barrie,  where  "Old  Lady  31" 
might  have  been  written  by  Ludwig  Fulda  and  "  The 
Truth"  by  Alfred  Capus  and  "The  New  York 
Idea  "  by  de  Caillavet  and  de  Flers  or  G.  K.  Ches- 
terton, it  is  pretty  difficult  to  think  of  any  one  having 


THE   POPULAR    THEATRE 

written  "  Kick  In  "  or  "  Within  the  Law  "  or  "  It 
Pays  to  Advertise  "  or  "  Turn  to  the  Right  "  save  an 
American.  "  The  Faun,"  presented  anonymously, 
might  well  have  been  attributed  to  a  Continental  like 
Molnar,  but  "  Cheating  Cheaters  "  would  puzzle  no 
one.  Such  plays  are  as  undeniably  and  unmistakably 
American  as  "  The  Habit  of  a  Lackey  "  is  unde- 
niably and  unmistakably  French  or  as  "  Maria 
Rosa  "  is  Spanish  or  as  "  Riders  to  the  Sea  "  is  Irish 
or  as  "  The  Flag  Lieutenant "  is  British  or  as 
"  Anatol  "  is  Viennese  or  "  The  Sea  Gull  "  Russian. 
Foreigners,  the  British  frequently,  the  French 
occasionally  and  the  Germans  somewhat  less  occa- 
sionally, have  attempted  to  imitate  the  Broadway- 
American  play  and  to  poor,  if  not  indeed  ridiculous, 
result.  Such  German  imitations  of  the  Broadway 
crook  farce  as  Turzinsky  and  Stifter's  "  One 
Shouldn't  Write  Letters  "  have  been  as  unhappy  as 
such  French  imitations  of  Broadway  melodrama  as 
Bisson  and  Livet's  "  Nick  Carter  "  or  as  such  British 
imitations  of  the  Broadway  chaskleinismus  as  A.  E. 
W.  Mason's  "  For  the  Defence."  Broadway  is  as 
exotically  American  as  watermelon  and  the  men's 
suits  they  make  in  Rochester,  and  its  peculiar  and 
individual  dramaturgy  cannot  be  duplicated  by  the 
foreigner  any  more  than  can  the  Bronx  cocktail. 
The  humour  of  Cartoonist  Goldberg,  the  music  of 
Irving  Berlin,  the  drugstores  of  the  Riker-Hegeman 
Company,  the  acting  of  Frank  Craven,  the  House  of 
Representatives,  the  Pittsburgh  stogie,  Beeman's 
Pepsin  Chewing  Gum,  the  mechanical  barber-chair 
and  the  drama  of  George  Cohan  are  each  and  all 

£46] 


autoptically  and  incontrovertibly  American,  and  the 
foreigner,  if  he  would  take  them,  must  take  them  in 
their  entirety,  just  as  they  stand,  bone,  fat  and  all, 
or  leave  them.  They  resist  change,  adaptation,  tink- 
ering. They  are  as  saliently  American,  however 
greatly  the  foreigner  may  try  to  disguise  them,  as 
the  drama  of  Francois  de  Curel  and  women's  bangs 
slicked  down  with  white  of  egg  are  French  or  as 
Wagner's  operas  and  dill  pickles  are  German. 

Broadway,  strident,  half-cooked,  credulous,  un- 
learned and  egregious,  is  the  epitome  of  mob  Amer- 
ica and  of  mob  America's  view  of  art  and  letters. 
And  its  plays,  not  the  plays  of  such  as  Avery  Hop- 
wood  or  Langdon  Mitchell  or  Eleanor  Gates  or 
young  Eugene  O'Neill,  are  the  plays  that  are  most 
representatively  American.  That  these  plays  are 
not  always  plays  to  the  palate  of  the  tenth  Ameri- 
can, that  this  one  man  out  of  every  ten  of  his  com- 
patriots prefers  probably  the  finer  American  efforts 
of  such  other  writers  for  the  national  theatre  as  the 
Zoe  Akins  of  "  Papa  "  or  the  Edward  Sheldon  of  at 
least  "The  Song  of  Songs"  or  the  late  C.  M.  S. 
MacLellan  of  "  The  Shirkers,"  does  not  alter  the  fact 
that  they  are,  nevertheless  and  pertinently,  the  one 
genuine,  blown-in-the-bottle  contribution  of  the 
United  States  to  the  world's  museum  of  show-shop 
literature  and  that  they  are  in  their  way,  and  in  their 
design  and  content,  as  valuable,  significant  and  fruity 
to  the  international  student  of  national  characteris- 
tics as  the  flat-houses  of  Charlottenburg  or  a  dinner 
with  a  French  family  in  its  home  or  a  flirtation 
with  a  Chinese  sing-song  girl. 

[471 


THE   POPULAR    THEATRE 

That  these  plays  of  Broadway  are  not  more  ele- 
gant specimens  of  dramatic  literature  may  be,  quite 
true,  a  matter  for  aesthetic  regret,  but  this  is  not  the 
point.  At  least  not  in  this  present  chapter.  The 
Ziegfeld  "  Follies  "  is  the  highest  form  of  music 
show  of  its  particular  genre  that  the  world  knows 
today;  it  hits  squarely  the  mark  it  aims  at;  and  there's 
nothing  to  be  gained  lamenting  the  circumstance  that, 
after  all,  it  isn't  an  opera.  The  plays  of  George 
Cohan,  by  the  same  token,  are  the  shrewdest  speci- 
mens of  their  particular  school  that  you  will  find  any- 
where along  the  coasts  of  the  seven  seas,  and  it  is 
equally  vain,  and  even  sillier,  to  grumble  that  they 
have  not  been  written  by  John  Galsworthy.  The 
trade  of  Broadway  is  the  trade  of  turning  out  the 
Broadway-American  play.  And  it  knows  its  job 
superlatively  well;  and  if  that  job  is  the  jejune  and 
humble  one  we  know  it  to  be,  the  knowledge  must  not 
obscure  the  fact  that  the  Broadway  playwriting  type 
of  American  is  still  as  considerable  a  virtuoso  in  his 
line  as  the  Chicago  beef-king  type  of  American  is  in 
his  or  the  Schenectady  electro-mechanical  type  of 
American  in  his. 

When  the  American  of  Broadway  is  a  frank, 
natural  and  undissembling  man,  when  he  admits  him- 
self to  be  merely  a  good-natured  dudeler  and  lays  no 
pretence  to  the  purple  robes,  when  he  confesses  en- 
gagingly that  he  doesn't  know  a  thing  about  the 
ologies  and  therapys  and  isms,  nor  about  Mozart  and 
Huysmans  and  Manet,  nor  about  Sercial  Madeira 
and  butlers  and  finger  bowls,  when,  in  short,  he 
strikes  no  spurious  posture  and  seeks  not  tp  be  a 

[48] 


ITS  BROADWAY 

higher  fellow  than  in  actuality  he  is,  he  serves  the 
American  drama  honourably  and,  for  all  his  short- 
comings, interestingly.  For  it  is  this  playmaker  who 
at  intervals  prosperously  carries  forward  still  an- 
other step  the  thoroughly  American  drama  of  such 
as  Hoyt  and  Ade,  who  brings  that  drama  a  trifle 
closer  to  the  national  pulse,  a  trifle  nearer  to  the 
national  philosophy,  a  trifle  more  snugly,  perhaps, 
within  the  bounds  of  a  more  finished  technic.  In  this 
category  we  find  such  Broadway  plays  as  Craven's 
"  Too  Many  Cooks,"  as  Smith's  "  Fortune  Hunter," 
as  Cohan's  "  Wallingford  "  and  Megrue's  "  It  Pays 
to  Advertise."  Of  such  is  the  real  and  more  search- 
ing drama  of  the  United  States,  of  thrice  the  native 
authenticity  of  a  dozen  "  Witching  Hours,"  a  dozen 
"  Peter  Grimms,"  a  dozen  "  Cases  of  Becky  "  and 
"  As  a  Man  Thinks  "  and  "  Models  "  and  "  Bump- 
stead-Leighs "  and  other  such  pseudo-philosophi- 
cal, pseudo-psychological,  pseudo-metaphysical  and 
pseudo-drawing-room  pseudo-opera. 

These  latter  berceuses,  and  numerous  others  like 
them,  though  all  too  commonly  held  up  by  the  pro- 
fessors as  high-water  marks  of  the  American  drama- 
turgy, are  in  reality  American  plays  only  in  so  far  as 
they  have  been  written  by  Americans.  But  further 
than  this  they  are  no  more  genuinely  American  than 
Milwaukee.  They  are,  for  the  most  part,  mere 
half-digested  and  shoddy  apings  and  cuckooings  of 
European  plays,  mere  strivings  of  intellectual  climb- 
ers to  break  into  the  select  circle,  mere  antics  of  the 
bourgeoisie  in  Sunday  clothes.  When  I  say  that  it 
is  the  influence  of  Fifth  Avenue,  rather  than  the  in- 

[49] 


THE   POPULAR    THEATRE 

fluence  of  Broadway,  that  has  brought  the  real  ill  to 
the  American  drama,  this  is  what  I  mean.  I  mean 
Fifth  Avenue  in  the  abstract,  the  Fifth  Avenue  com- 
plex in  the  physical  and  psychical  composition  of 
Sixth:  the  intellectual  pusher,  the  toothpick  user  in 
the  top  hat,  the  Roget  litterateur,  the  Phoenix  Ingra- 
ham  of  the  Broadway  beau  monde,  the  halb-schopen- 
hauer  of  the  Rialto's  lettered  elite,  the  Mezzofanti 
of  Jack's.  It  is  this  influence  and  the  playwriters 
it  has  bred  that  have  brought  to  the  native  drama 
those  qualities  of  fake  and  snobbery,  of  charlatanism 
and  ankle-deep  profundity,  that  have  made  the 
American  drama  a  thing  for  mock  and  nose-fingering, 
a  target  for  slapsticks  and  tin  broadswords.  It  is 
this  influence  that  causes  the  so-called  dean  of  Amer- 
ican dramatists  to  write,  in  the  phrase  of  the  late 
Charles  Frohman,  the  way  a  negro  talks,  that  causes 
the  so-called  wizard  of  American  stage  lore  to  tackle 
psychotherapeutical  drama  when  his  talent  is  really 
for  the  good,  plain,  old-fashioned  melodramatical 
kind  in  which  somebody  beats  Jack  Dalton  to  the 
railroad  trestle,  that  causes  this  and  that  writer  for 
our  theatre  periodically  to  compose  a  society  play 
in  which  the  butler  passes  back  and  forth  through  the 
drawing-room  on  his  way  to  answer  the  doorbell. 

And  it  is  this  influence  that,  by  so  bringing  these 
otherwise  skilful  writers  for  the  stage  to  write  of 
things  foreign  to  them,  at  once  takes  them  from  that 
very  field  wherein  they  might  do  praiseworthy  work 
and  wherein  they  might  labour  to  the  greater  good 
and  greater  estate  of  the  native  drama.  For  these 
misled  writers  are  intrinsically  clever  fellows,  some 

[50] 


ITS   BROADWAY 

of  them  vastly  more  so  than  some  of  their  Broadway 
confreres  whose  plays  are  numbered  in  the  represent- 
ative stage  literature  of  our  country;  and  that  they 
might  further  enrich  and  further  develop  this  Broad- 
way-American drama  were  they  not  so  self-seduced 
is  only  too  plain,  and  only  too  regrettable.  .  .  . 
That  the  rooster  a  peacock  would  be,  that  chanticleer 
would  seek  to  control  the  source  of  all  light,  that  the 
modern  Davids  do  put  too  much  faith  in  the  Goliath 
fable! 

To  oppose  the  contention  that  these  writers  who 
essay  to  break  away  from  Broadway  are  to  be  com- 
mended in  that,  coincidentally,  they  are  making  an 
effort  to  inject  a  something  finer,  a  something  more 
exalted  and  finished,  into  the  Broadway-American 
drama,  is  to  argue  ( i )  that  the  leopard  can  change 
his  spots  and  (2)  that,  having  changed  them,  he  may 
be  used  conveniently  as  a  checker-board.  The  one 
thing  above  all  others  that  the  Broadway-American 
drama  does  not  need  is  finish.  Its  very  crudity  is  the 
thing  that  makes  it  what  it  is.  It  is  this  crudity,  this 
lack  of  polished  writing  and  artistic  exaltation,  that 
best  serves  it  and  permits  it  sharply  to  reflect  its  sub- 
ject matter  and  its  characters.  The  Broadway- 
American  drama  and  crudity  are  generically — • 
aesthetically,  if  you  will  —  as  inseparable  as  are 
crudity  and  the  American  burlesque  show,  crudity 
and  Hindu  music,  crudity  and  the  heavyweight  prize- 
fight or  crudity  and  East  Indian  dancing.  Take  one 
from  the  other  and  you  have  nothing  left.  To  refine 
the  Broadway-American  drama  is  to  emasculate  it, 
to  take  the  racy  Americanism  out  of  it  and  to  fit  it  to 


THE   POPULAR    THEATRE 

an  inappropriate  standard  and  formula.  To  refine 
the  Broadway-American  drama  and  to  eliminate 
from  it  its  crudity  is  to  supplant  the  bladder  in  the 
burlesque  show  with  a  copy  of  the  Atlantic  Monthly, 
to  add  a  bass  viol  and  French  horn  to  the  Hindu 
orchestra,  to  make  the  prize-fighters  perform  like  so 
many  Bunthornes,  and  to  persuade  the  East  Indian 
ladies  to  don  diapers. 

But,  even  were  the  refinement  of  this  drama  a  de- 
sideratum, the  playwrights  who  have  deserted  the 
field  for  the  more  tony  dramatic  regions  of  polysyl- 
lables and  metempsychosis  and  Pitts  the  butler,  would 
in  all  probability  be  scarcely  the  souls  for  the  job. 
What  they  would  bring  to  the  Broadway-American 
play  would  be  not  so  much  refinement  in  its  genuine 
and  tonic  sense  as  refinement  of  the  whimsical  genre 
that  they  presently  exhibit  to  us  in  their  wares :  that 
is,  refinement  translated  in  terms  of  a  French  maid, 
a  mauve  piano  and  some  orange  and  magenta  Elsie 
De  Wolf  sofa  pillows.  What  they  would  bring  to 
the  Broadway-American  play,  further,  would  be  the 
florid  altiloquence  which  they  mistake  for  fine  writing 
and  which  presently  contrives  to  make  all  their  char- 
acters talk  like  a  curtain-speech  by  an  English  actor. 

On  the  other  hand,  were  these  Rialto  exquisites  to 
get  back,  so  to  speak,  to  the  soil,  were  they  to  resist 
this  impulse  to  strut  and  crow,  were  they  to  be  again 
the  men  they  truly  are  —  not  scholars  nor  men  of 
letters  nor  bloods  of  the  world  of  fashion,  but 
dexterous  fellows  at  stage  writing  withal  —  the 
Broadway-American  play  might  benefit  by  their  skill 
and  experience,  by  the  qualities  they  indubitably  pos- 

£52] 


ITS   BROADWAY 

sess  but  which  currently  are  buried  deep  under  the 
layers  of  flourish  and  affectation.  The  Broadway- 
American  drama  is  not  always  the  stupidaggine  and 
the  despicable  art  form  they  and  we  are  led  by  the 
macaronis  of  the  forum  to  believe.  It  has  its  place, 
and  a  definite  one,  in  American  art  and  letters,  just 
as  have  the  excellent  cartoons  of  Webster  and 
McCutcheon  and  Briggs,  the  peculiarly  indigenous 
and  strikingly  characteristic  writings  of  E.  W.  Howe, 
and  the  humour  of  Ring  Lardner  and  Helen  Green. 
There  is  no  more  reason  for  the  typical  American 
writer  of  typical  American  plays  to  attempt  to  bring 
so-called  politeness  and  literary  atmosphere  to 
Broadway  than  there  is  for  the  typical  American, 
writer  of  typical  American  songs  to  bring  Verlaine 
and  Swinburne  to  tin-pan  alley.  It  is  a  double  imitat- 
ing to  essay  to  make  of  the  American  drama  a  society 
drama,  for  American  society  is  already  a  mere 
mimicking  of  English  society.  The  typical  Ameri- 
can drama  must  be  —  and  is  —  the  drama  of  the 
typical  American  people.  And  the  archtype  of  this 
people,  already  automatically  and  naturally  exagger- 
ated for  the  exaggeration  vital  to  stage  depictment, 
is  the  American  people  of  Broadway. 


Chapter  Four:  Its  Audiences 

The  late  Paul  Armstrong  once  submitted  to  H.  L. 
Mencken  and  myself,  as  joint  magazine  editors,  an 
article  on  American  theatre  audiences  which,  after 
hotly  accusing  the  latter  of  everything  from  mere 
rats  in  the  upper  story  to  lycanthropy,  sought  for  all 
time  to  establish  their  ignorance  before  the  world 
and  put  them  to  complete  abashed  rout  in  a  grand 
italicized  coda  that  —  after  an  inordinately  long  dash 
which  seemed  with  sinister  hush  to  beseech  the 
reader  to  take  aboard  an  extra  lungful  that  he  might 
be  properly  prepared  for  the  final  dumfounding  fetch 
—  gravely  announced  that  where  the  average  Amer- 
ican audience  did  not  know  the  difference  between  one 
Beethoven  symphony  and  another,  there  was  not  a 
single  peasant  in  all  Germany  who  didn't  know  the 
whole  nine  by  heart !  When  we  returned  the  manu- 
script to  Armstrong  with  the  affable  comment  that 
there  probably  was  not  a  single  peasant  in  all  Ger- 
many who  had  ever  heard  of  Beethoven,  to  say  noth- 
ing of  his  symphonies,  our  friend  became  exceeding 
wroth  and  made  high  answer  that  he  deemed  our  jest 
indeed  ill-suited  to  his  notabilia.  We  tried  subse- 
quently to  convince  him  of  our  perfect  seriousness, 
but  to  no  avail.  And  he  died  still  firmly  convinced 
that  we  had  been  making  unseemly  mock  of  him. 

[54] 


ITS   AUDIENCES 

I  quote  this  memoir  of  the  inner  chamber  because 
America  is  still  full  of  Armstrongs  who  believe  that 
the  average  American  theatre  audience  is  made  up  of 
blockheads  where  the  average  British  or  Continental 
audience  is  made  up  of  professors  of  the  true  aes- 
thetic. I  have  encountered  such,  personally  and  in 
their  quill  juices,  among  no  end  of  American  writers 
on  the  drama  and  no  end  of  other  persons  connected 
both  directly  and  indirectly  with  the  world  of  the 
theatre.  And  each  of  them,  it  would  appear,  has 
imagined  something  to  the  effect  that  where  the 
typical  American  who  seeks  the  playhouse  as  a  regu- 
lar pastime  cherishes  Mr.  Al  Jolson  and  little  else, 
the  Frenchman  of  similar  texture  passionately  dotes 
on  Moliere,  the  German  Schiller,  and  the  English- 
man if  not  exactly  Shakespeare,  at  least  drama  of  the 
next  best  order.  That  the  average  American  the- 
atre audience  is  representative  of  the  lowest  breed 
of  American,  no  one  will  deny;  but  the  supposition 
that  the  analogous  mob  audiences  of  England  and 
the  Continent  are  comparatively  of  a  vast  superior- 
ity to  the  average  native  audience  and  that,  unlike 
this  audience,  they  are  to  a  considerable  degree  rep- 
resentative of  their  countries'  culture  and  fine  feel- 
ing, is  a  something  to  jounce  anyone  who  has 
slummed  amongst  them. 

The  mob  audience,  that  is,  the  audience  that  sup- 
ports the  Broadways  of  the  theatrical  capitals  and 
sub-capitals  of  the  world,  is  much  the  same  wherever 
one  finds  it.  It  is  made  up,  for  the  most  part,  in 
England  of  the  type  of  Englishman  who  reads  The 
Winning  Post,  looks  on  Melville  Gideon  as  a 

[55] 


THE   POPULAR    THEATRE 

greater  composer  than  Purcell  and  Phil  May  as  a 
better  satiric  artist  than  Hogarth;  in  France  of  the 
type  of  Frenchman  who  patronizes  the  Bouillons 
Duval  for  their  pies,  reads  Henri  Bordeaux  and 
weeps  copiously  when  the  Mile.  Nelly  Vignal  comes 
out  in  a  purple  light  and  with  much  eyelid  flickering 
sings  "  L'Eternelle  Boheme";  in  Germany  of  the 
type  of  German  who  collects  photographs  of  the 
lady  skaters  in  the  Admirals'-Palast;  and  in  Austria 
of  the  type  of  Austrian  who  would  walk  several  miles 
to  see  the  latest  revue  in  the  Raimund-theater,  where 
he  wouldn't  cross  the  street  to  get  into  the  Carlthe- 
ater  on  a  pass. 

The  theory  that  the  French  mob  audience  flocks 
ardently  to  the  Comedie  and  the  German  mob  audi- 
ence to  the  chambers  of  Reinhardt  is  one  of  the 
curious  delusions  fostered  in  America  by  those 
ubiquitous  native  theatrical  commentators  who  be- 
lieve that  because  the  foreign  drama  is  a  better  and 
finer  drama  than  our  own,  the  virtue  of  that  drama 
must  be  due  to  its  appreciation  and  encouragement 
by  the  general  foreign  theatre  audiences.  Nothing, 
of  course,  could  be  further  removed  from  the 
truth.  As  many  first-rate  plays  have  been  starved 
to  death  in  the  popular  theatres  of  Europe  as 
have  been  starved  to  death  in  the  theatres  of  the 
United  States.  Such  substantial  plays  as  Shaw's 
"  Caesar  and  Cleopatra  "  and  Pinero's  "  Thunder- 
bolt "  have  failed  as  signally  to  woo  the  average 
London  auditorium  dodo  as  such  guano  as  "  A  Lit- 
tle Bit  of  Fluff  "  and  "  Mr.  Wu  "  and  the  Vachell 
stuff  has  succeeded.  The  American  mob  audience, 

[56] 


ITS  AUDIENCES 

indeed,  patronized  "  Caesar  and  Cleopatra  "  in  con- 
siderably larger  numbers  than  the  English.  The 
average  French  audience  permits  De  Curel  or  Jules 
Bois  to  run  a  scant  two  or  three  dozen  nights  and 
yells  itself  hoarse  for  a  solid  year  over  the  blood- 
hounds in  a  Gallic  version  of  "  Sherlock  Holmes," 
and  over  the  long  eyelashed  M.  Brule  as  "  Raffles," 
and  over  "  Arsene  Lupin."  Antoine  has  lost  al- 
most as  much  on  Shakespeare  as  the  theatre  that 
bears  his  name  has  made  on  cheap  Cap  Collier  melo- 
dramas. The  average  German  audience,  promiscu- 
ously held  up  as  a  kulturklatsch,  has  caused  four 
Hauptmann  dramas  in  succession  to  be  summarily 
removed  from  the  stage  for  lack  of  patronage  and 
has  laughed  such  things  as  Hofmannsthal's  "  Chris- 
tina's Homecoming  "  quickly  into  the  discard,  while 
it  has  pounded  its  palms  in  admiration  over  such 
colics  as  Walter  Howard's  transplanted  tub-pound- 
ers and  the  same  detective  flapdoodle  that  has  en- 
thralled the  Parisian.  Reinhardt,  to  live  at  all,  has 
had  to  rely  on  the  frequent  backing  of  social  pushers. 
And  Hauptmann  was  shouldered  completely  aside 
by  the  Berlin  mob  until  a  privately  supported  theatre 
gave  him  a  hearing. 

It  is  a  well-known  tradition  of  the  American  the- 
atre that  when  the  stage  crew  —  that  is,  the  scene 
shifters,  electricians,  et  al. —  pronounces  a  play  good 
during  the  period  of  preliminary  rehearsals,  its  judg- 
ment will  invariably  be  subsequently  concurred  in  and 
supported  by  the  public.  Thus,  the  voice  of  the 
stage  crew  is  the  voice  of  the  American  people. 
Three  days  before  Mr.  Augustus  Thomas'  "  The 

[57} 


THE   POPULAR    THEATRE 

Copperhead  "  opened  in  the  Shubert  Theatre,  where 
the  Shuberts  had  given  it  a  home  after  a  number  of 
other  managers  had  denied  it  floor  space  in  their 
respective  emporia,  the  stage  crew  voted  the  play  a 
magnificent  opus.  This  was  three  days,  as  I  have 
noted,  before  the  premiere.  The  advance  reports  of 
the  play  promised  not  especially  well.  Such  astute 
producers  as  Belasco  and  Tyler  had  rejected  the 
manuscript  when  it  was  submitted  by  the  author  to 
them  and  such  equally  astute  managers  as  Hopkins 
and  Woods  and  Klaw  and  Erlanger  had  been  reluc- 
tant to  book  it  in  their  playhouses.  And  then  when 
the  play  opened,  the  public,  echoing  the  lofty  asthetik 
of  the  stage  crew,  paid  in  $14,000  the  first  week  to 
see  it  and  acclaim  it  a  work  of  art !  And  the  play 
turned  out  to  be  one  of  the  big  popular  successes  of 
a  season. 

If  the  American  aesthetic  demi-monde  prefers 
Smith  and  Hazzard's  "  Turn  to  the  Right "  and 
Armstrong's  "  Jimmy  Valentine,"  to  Brieux's  excel- 
lent "  The  Incubus,"  the  average  French  audience 
prefers  Rivoire  and  Bernard's  "  Mon  Ami  Teddy  " 
and  the  adapted  "  Le  Mysterieux  Jimmy  "  to  it  no 
less.  And  if  the  average  American  audience  prefers 
a  so-called  crook  play  like  "  Officer  666  "  to  the  work 
of  Langdon  Mitchell,  you  may  rest  assured  that  the 
records  show  that  the  average  German  or  Austrian 
levy  similarly  prefers  a  so-called  crook  play  like 
"  Der  Herr  Verteidigei*  "  to  the  work  of  Max  Halbe 
or  Arthur  Schnitzler.  On  the  other  side,  if  it  be 
claimed  for  the  German  mob  audience  that  it  has 
been  hospitable  to  the  work  of  such  meritorious  fel- 

[58] 


ITS  AUDIENCES 

lows  as  Thoma,  for  the  French  mob  audience  that  it 
has  applauded  such  as  Feydeau,  for  the  Austrian  that 
it  has  liberally  patronized  such  as  Bahr  and  the  Brit- 
ish such  as  Birmingham,  let  it  not  be  forgotten  that 
the  American  mob  audience  has  also  visited  success 
upon  such  of  our  own  praiseworthy  writers  as 
Eleanor  Gates,  Avery  Hopwood,  Edward  Knob- 
lauch and  Jesse  Lynch  Williams.  But  these  in- 
stances of  menagerie  discrimination  are  as  much  the 
exception  in  Europe  as  they  are  in  America.  And 
the  generalization  from  these  exceptions  is  but  an- 
other of  the  numerous  nonsenses  brewed  by  the  local 
neo-Brunetieres  when  they  make  bold  to  wade  above 
their  ankles  in  exotic  waters. 

The  first-rate  drama  of  England  and  the  Conti- 
nent has  had  as  tough  a  road  to  travel  as  the  Ameri- 
can. And  if  it  has  flowered  more  beautifully  in 
Europe  than  in  America,  that  flowering  has  been  due 
not  to  the  attitude  of  the  mob  audience  toward  it, 
but,  very  simply,  because  it  is  possible  for  a  European 
theatre  manager  to  conduct  his  business  upon  a  very 
much  cheaper  scale  than  the  American  manager  and 
so  give  three  or  four  plays  a  hearing  —  and  take  a 
gambler's  chance  on  return  —  where  the  American 
manager  can  afford  but  a  single  risk.  Thus,  where 
a  native  producer  like  Mr.  Hopkins  is  able,  because 
of  top-lofty  actors'  salaries,  absurdly  heavy  theatre 
rental  and  the  like,  to  take  a  flier  on  a  single  so- 
called  unpopular  and  meritorious  work  like  Berger's 
"  Deluge,"  the  Continental  producer  like  Barnowski, 
with  the  same  amount  of  money,  is  able  to  take  a 
chance  on  four  such  pieces  as  Schnitzler's  "  Professor 

[59] 


THE  POPULAR    THEATRE 

Bernhardi,"  Hermann's  "  Little  Yetta  Gebert," 
Thoma's  "  Dear  Relations  "  and  Andreyev's  "  Stu- 
dents' Love."  When,  in  this  situation,  it  happens 
that  the  American  public  brings  by  its  indifference 
summary  failure  to  the  Berger  play  and  the  Conti- 
nental public  by  its  indifference  to  Schnitzler,  Thoma 
and  Andreyev  failure  to  these  but,  by  its  interest, 
success  to  Hermann,  the  leading  heavies  and  genteel 
comedians  of  our  local  criticism,  thinking  only  of  the 
mob  approbation  of  Hermann,  proceed  promptly  to 
the  conclusion  that  the  American  audience  is  a  group 
of  fribble  goophers  and  the  Continental  a  body  of 
connoisseurs. 

That  the  Berger  play  was  no  gold  mine  when  pro- 
duced in  Europe  and  that  the  American  mob  audience 
which  gave  it  the  cold  shoulder  might,  very  probably, 
have  patronized  at  least  one  of  three  other  good 
plays  had  Mr.  Hopkins,  as  Victor  Barnowski,  been 
able  to  afford  that  number,  such  professors  fail  to 
ponder.  It  cost  Mr.  Hopkins  approximately  five 
thousand  dollars  to  produce  "  The  Deluge  "  and 
these  five  thousand  dollars  were  a  complete  loss.  It 
cost  Barnowski  fifteen  hundred  dollars  less  than  this 
amount  to  produce  the  four  plays  named,  and  his 
success  with  one  of  them  gave  him  a  profit  of  several 
thousands  of  dollars  in  the  quadruple  undertaking. 
If,  therefore,  Mr.  Hopkins  had  been  able  for  his 
five  thousand  dollars  to  produce,  in  addition  to  "  The 
Deluge,"  three  additional  such  commendable  plays 
as  those  of  Thoma,  Hermann  and  Andreyev,  it  is 
assuredly  a  modest  gambler's  hazard  that  at  least 
one  of  them,  as  in  the  instance  of  the  Continental 

[60] 


ITS  AUDIENCES 

audience,  might  have  met  with  a  sufficiently  remu- 
nerative response  from  the  American  audience.  The 
whole  thing  is  vastly  less  a  consideration  of  public 
taste  than  of  theatrical  economics. 

If  the  British  mob  audience  has  visited  prosperity 
on  "  General  John  Regan  "  where  the  American  mob 
audience  visited  failure,  the  American  mob  audience 
has  visited  prosperity  on  Galsworthy's  "  Justice  " 
where  the  British  mob  audience  visited  failure.  If 
the  French  mob  audience  has  made  a  failure  of  Ber- 
nard Shaw  where  the  American  audience  has  made  a 
comparative  success,  the  American  audience  has 
made  a  failure  of  Alfred  Capus  where  the  French 
audience  has  made  a  comparative  success.  "  Kis- 
met "  succeeds  brilliantly  in  America  and  fails  ab- 
jectly in  France.  "  Know  Thyself  "  succeeds  bril- 
liantly in  France  and  fails  dismally  in  America. 
Bahr's  "  Concert  "  succeeds  as  finely  in  America  as  in 
Germany,  and  Wedekind  fails  as  quickly  in  Germany 
as  in  America.  "  Androcles  and  the  Lion  "  goes  no 
better  in  Austria  than  in  America.  And  "  The 
King  "  is  as  great  a  success  in  America  as  in  France. 
.  .  .  Two  of  one,  gentlemen,  and  a  half  dozen  of 
the  other!  .  .  .  When  the  professors  touch  the 
caustic  to  the  American  yokelry  for  its  lavish  esteem 
of  such  mush  as  "  Peg  o'  My  Heart,"  do  the  solemn 
comedians  not  recall  that  the  British  yokelry  has 
esteemed  it  no  less?  When  the  good  souls  decry  the 
American  mob's  preference  for  such  meringue  as 
"  The  Rainbow,"  do  they  not  remind  themselves  that 
the  French  admired  equally  Guinon  and  Bouchinet's 
play  from  which  it  was  lifted.  And  when  they  de- 

[61] 


plore  the  American  vulgarity  which  makes  such  an 
enormous  success  of  "  The  Blue  Mouse,"  do  they 
forget  that  the  same  piece  made  a  huge  fortune  out 
of  a  like  vulgarity  in  Germany  and  Austria. 

The  average  theatrical  audience,  the  world  over, 
is  pretty  much  the  same.  Its  response  to  such  things 
as  Hall  Caine's  "  The  Christian,"  "  The  Belle  of 
New  York,"  the  Covent  Garden  "  Cinderella  "  pan- 
tomime and  the  Cecil  Raleigh-Henry  Hamilton  and 
Arthur  Collins  melopiece  is,  in  general,  as  quick  and 
as  full  in  the  shadows  of  St.  Stephen's  and  Nelson's 
statue,  and  in  the  lights  of  the  Rue  de  1'Opera  and 
Unter  den  Linden,  as  in  the  shadows  of  the  Times 
building  and  in  the  lights  of  Chicago's  Loop.  If,  on 
the  other  hand,  it  in  its  American  incarnation  fails 
to  grasp  such  a  play  as  "  Candida,"  the  statistics 
show  that  in  its  French  incarnation  it  laughed  persist- 
ently at  the  wrong  time  when  the  play  was  produced 
in  the  Theatre  cjes  Arts.  And  if  it  is  locally  immune 
to  such  a  satire  as  "  Where  Ignorance  Is  Bliss,"  the 
records  show  that  the  satire  has  been  not  particularly 
contagious  in  its  native  Austria. 

The  popular  playhouse  is,  in  general  and  at  bot- 
tom, not  much  less  a  depot  of  wishwash  in  Europe 
than  in  America.  For  the  intrinsic  nature  of  the 
agglomerate  European  mob  and  the  European  mass 
ass  is,  after  all,  much  of  the  kidney  of  the  nature  of 
our  own  mob  and  our  own  Hottentot.  Both  respond 
in  the  theatre  as  they  respond  out  of  that  theatre. 
And  both,  in  both  situations,  are  sisters  under  their 
skins  in  the  way  of  tastes  and  reactions,  predilections 
and  responsive  gustos.  On  the  streets  the  European 

£62]. 


ITS  AUDIENCES 

mob  whistles  and  hums  the  selfsame  "  Merry 
Widow  "  waltz,  the  selfsame  "  Puppchen,"  the  self- 
same "  Un  Peu  d' Amour  "  and  the  selfsame  "  You're 
Here  and  I'm  Here  "  that  the  American  mob  whistles 
and  hums  on  its  streets.  And  it  buys  the  same  three- 
for-five  picture  postcards  showing  the  rear  view  of  a 
fat  soul  with  the  legend  "  I'm  glad  to  see  you're 
back  again,"  and  the  red  and  green  portrait  of  the 
bald-headed  family  man  bouncing  an  exotic  chicken 
on  his  knee  and  observing  that  "  Absence  makes  the 
heart  grow  fonder."  And  it,  too,  like  our  own  peo- 
ple, coming  home  growling  and  grumpy  from  the 
working  day,  lights  up  with  broad  smiles  in  its 
crowded  street-cars  at  the  mere  sight  of  a  blinking, 
thumb-sucking,  apple-faced  baby. 

The  theory,  therefore,  that  these  European  crowds 
are  promptly  metamorphosed  into  profound  savants, 
cynics  and  art  lovers  the  moment  they  enter  a  theatre, 
where  the  same  American  crowds  remain  so  many 
gowks  and  doodles,  offers  a  considerable  enterprise 
for  the  critical  digestion.  The  truth,  of  course,  is 
that  the  average  audience,  whether  in  Europe  or 
America,  is  generally  alike  as  two  derby  hats.  The 
average  French  audience,  exactly  as  the  average 
American  audience,  cares  infinitely  less  for  Paul 
Hervieu  than  for  Harry  Pilcer.  And  the  average 
British  audience  admires  George  Robey,  the  highest 
salaried  British  comique,  above  Stephen  Phillips 
exactly  as  the  average  American  audience  admires 
Fred  Stone,  the  highest  salaried  American  comique, 
above  Percy  Mackaye.  And  the  average  German 
audience  prefers  the  Wintergarten  to  Reinhardt's 

[63] 


THE   POPULAR    THEATRE 

repertory  theatre  just  as  the  average  American  audi- 
ence prefers  the  Winter  Garden  to  Grace  George's 
repertory  theatre. 

Our  average  American  theatre  audiences  are  bad 
enough,  the  good  Lord  knows,  but  three  weeks  before 
the  war  swept  the  world  I  heard,  in  one  of  the  prin- 
cipal theatres  in  one  of  the  most  cultured  capitals  of 
Europe,  a  typical  European  audience  —  the  kind  our 
professors  are  forever  anointing  with  lavender 
flavours  —  shake  the  great  chandelier  with  behemo- 
thine  horse-laughs  when  a  coquettish  fat  blonde  in  a 
low-cut  red  satin  gown,  hearing  footsteps  approach, 
guiltily  exclaimed  "  My  God!  My  husband!  ",  and 
when  then  there  ambled  on  a  tramp  comedian  jug- 
gling four  brass  spittoons.  .  .  . 


Doubtless  more  insistently  than  any  other  native 
form  of  entertainment  are  the  so-called  William 
Hodge  plays  held  up  as  deplorably  emblematic  of 
the  average  American  audience's  love  for  vulgarity 
and  bad  manners.  This  Hodge  has  made  a  great 
fortune,  so  say  persons  interested  in  such  extrinsic 
matters,  out  of  his  annual  laudation  of  God's  Kansas 
and  Ohio  noblemen  who  drink  out  of  the  fingerbowl, 
pick  their  teeth  with  the  oyster  fork  and  clean  their 
nails  with  the  fruit  knife;  and  he  has  thus  provided 
unfailing  copy  for  the  mugient  professors  in  the  mat- 
ter of  bienseance  and  punctilio.  That  this  Hodge 
and  his  plays  go  to  make  up,  true  enough,  a  steward- 
ship of  boarding-house  ethics,  is  readily  agreed. 
But  that  this  cheap  breeding  and  the  remunerative 

[64] 


ITS  AUDIENCES 

approbation  thereof  is  peculiar  to  our  American  mob 
audience  is  far  from  the  fact.  Europe  has  its 
Hodges  no  less  than  we.  Germany  has  its  Engels, 
France  its  Galipaux,  Austria  its  Anzengruber  Ghir- 
rardis,  and  England  its  Weedon  Grossmiths.  These 
pantaloons,  if  not  entirely  in  outward  appearance, 
are  yet  Hodges  in  essence  and  comparative  aesthetic, 
and  their  vulgarities  are  not  greatly  less  to  the  palates 
of  their  respective  national  audiences  than  is  the  vul- 
garity of  Hodge  to  the  palate  of  our  own. 

The  mob  success  of  Hodge  in  America,  however, 
seems  to  me  to  be  founded  less,  as  is  generally  be- 
lieved and  maintained,  on  the  cocky  ill-breeding  and 
procacity  of  the  characters  with  which  he  is  invari- 
ably associated  than  on  the  almanac  brand  of  philos- 
ophy which  he  through  these  characters  invariably 
expounds.  The  almost  mythical  proportions  of  the 
success  achieved  in  this  country  by  such  professional 
sunshine  brokers  as  Dr.  Frank  Crane,  Walt  Mason, 
Orison  Swett  Marden,  Gerald  Stanley  Lee  and  Her- 
bert Kaufman  and  such  members  of  the  allied  soror- 
rty  as  Frances  Hodgson  Burnett,  Eleanor  Porter, 
et  al.,  prove  beyond  contention  that  the  American 
public  has  an  elastic  stomach  for  this  glad  mush, 
and  cannot  get  enough  of  it.  And  the  Hodge, 
privy  to  the  secret,  simply  strings  along  with  the  up- 
lift pharmacopolists  and  gets  rich,  as  they  get  rich, 
by  dispensing  in  every  other  sentence  of  his  play's 
dialogue  some  joy  bolus  or  gloom  antiseptic.  A 
Hodge  money-maker,  therefore,  is  a  thing  all  com- 
pact of  such  inspiriting  philosophies  as  "  Every  cloud 
has  a  silver  lining,"  "  The  darkest  hour  comes  just 

[65] 


THE   POPULAR    THEATRE 

before  dawn,"  and  "  A  smile  in  the  heart  will  cure 
barber's-itch,"  and  the  American  public  goes  to  it 
like  a  cat  to  a  saucer  of  warm  milk. 


[66] 


PROPERTY  OF 

DEPARTS  OF  DRAMATIC  ARf 


Chapter  Five:  Its  Adaptations  and 
Its  Copeaus 

Salient  among  the  potentialities  of  Jacques 
Copeau's  transplanted  Theatre  du  Vieux  Colombier 
is  the  revealment  in  the  United  States  of  the  modern 
French  play  in  its  uncensored  flower,  to  the  coinci- 
dental establishment  and  possible  eventual  domestic 
acceptance  of  the  fact  that  the  business  of  adaptation 
commonly  visited  upon  that  play  is  approximately 
as  sensible  as  presenting  Henry  VIII  in  the  light  of 
an  unconscionable  hand-holder.  The  current  pro- 
miscuous subtractions  from  the  French  play  before 
that  play  is  deemed  fit  for  the  American  tooth  are 
based  upon  two  characteristic  assumptions:  first,  in 
the  instance  of  farce,  that  the  Anglo-Saxon  is  inca- 
pable of  viewing  adultery  save  as  tragedy,  and  sec- 
ond, in  the  instance  of  tragedy,  that  the  Anglo-Saxon 
is  incapable  of  viewing  adultery  save  as  grand  opera. 
From  these  premises,  both  to  a  preponderant  degree 
well-reasoned,  are  deduced  the  so-called  adaptations 
which  expound  French  farce  to  the  American  audi- 
ence as  a  somewhat  inscrutable  procedure  in  which  a 
man's  mistress  remains  oddly  enough  a  virgin,  and 
the  French  problem  play  as  a  triumph  of  phylactery 
over  physiology.  As  I  have  often  pointed  out,  the 

[67] 


THE   POPULAR    THEATRE 

denouement  is  the  kind  of  farce  that  proves  that  il- 
legitimate babies  are  the  result  of  promiscuous  kiss- 
ing, and  the  kind  of  problem  plays  that,  in  the  orig- 
inal French,  show  us  a  man  tiring  of  his  wife  and 
entering  into  a  liaison  with  his  wife's  best  friend  and, 
in  the  adaptation,  a  man  tiring  of  his  wife's  best 
friend  and  entering  into  a  liaison  with  his  wife. 

It  is  a  peculiarity  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  that  he  is 
able  to  conceive  the  seventh  sin  under  no  circum- 
stances as  a  collaboration,  but  under  all  circumstances 
only  as  a  plagiarism.  Thus,  it  may  figure  for  him 
as  the  basis  of  a  melodramatic  play  in  which  a  friend- 
less young  emigree  is  decoyed  upon  docking  by  a 
plausible  Neapolitan  or  in  which  the  wife  of  a  Union 
general  is  sardoued  while  in  a  fainting  condition  by  an 
inebriated  Confederate  spy,  but  scarcely  ever  as  a 
biological  scherzo.  It  would  seem,  indeed,  that  its 
dramatic  negotiation  is  comprehensible  to  him  only 
in  terms  of  aphasia,  knock-out-drops  or  the  Metro- 
politan orchestra.  And  it  would  seem,  further,  only 
to  be  aesthetically  justifiable  if  expounded  by  a  tenor 
and  soprano  neither  of  whom  weighs  less  than  two 
hundred  and  fifty  pounds.  He  is  able  to  swallow 
Tristan  and  Isolde,  but  he  gags  at  de  Caillavet's  and 
de  Flers'  King  Serge  and  Marthe  Bourdier.  He  can 
work  up  an  understanding  smile  for  Musette  and 
Marcel,  but  naught  save  a  blush  for  Capus'  Charlotte 
and  her  barrister.  This  attitude  on  his  part  makes 
for  queer  doings  when  the  Continental  play  is  pre- 
pared for  Anglo-Saxon  consumption,  and  not  the 
least  of  these  queer  doings  is  a  process  of  adaptation 
that,  albeit  unintentionally,  converts  such  a  play  into 

L68J 


ITS  ADAPTATIONS 

what  is  unquestionably  a  much  more  scampish  affair 
than  it  was  before  the  surgeon  set  about  his  opera- 
tion.1 

The  Frenchman  regards  a  repeal  of  VII  in  either 
one  of  two  sharply  defined  ways :  ( i )  as  a  catastro- 
phe, or  (2)  as  a  joke.  And  his  plays  treat  of  the 
subject  from  the  one  viewpoint  or  the  other.  The 
Anglo-Saxon,  on  the  other  hand,  views  the  business 
primarily  as  a  catastrophe  —  or  professes  so  to  view 
it  —  with  the  result  that  his  plays  must  handle  the 
topic  either  with  a  revolver  or  not  at  all.  A  frolic- 

1  Contrary  to  the  common  opinion,  the  average  American  adapta- 
tion of  a  French  play  fails  not  because  it  deodorizes  the  original 
(and  so  perverts  the  original  and  makes  it  a  thing  ridiculous),  but 
because  it  actually  transforms  the  French  play  into  a  more  immoral 
document  than  it  was  in  its  original  form.  True,  this  process  is  not 
intentional,  but  the  result  is  the  same.  When,  for  example,  the 
American  adaptor  adapts  a  liaison  into  a  mere  hot  kiss,  he  for- 
gets that  his  audience  now  sees  the  hot  kiss  in  action  where  in  the 
original  manuscript,  since  it  is  impossible  to  depict  a  liaison  in  ac- 
tion upon  the  open  stage,  the  French  audience  saw  nothing.  Again, 
when  the  American  adaptor  adapts  a  boudoir  into  a  library  he  is 
compelled  to  make  the  characters  go  much  further  than  in  the  orig- 
inal manuscript,  since  it  is  clearly  out  of  the  question  for  him  in 
a  library  scene  to  resort  to  the  original  device  of  hiding  from  the 
audience  the  transgressions  of  the  principal  characters  by  a  mo- 
mentary dropping  of  the  curtain.  Still  again,  when  the  American 
adaptor  turns  a  man's  mistress  into  his  aunt,  he  is  guilty  of  an  of- 
fensive Oedipus  Rex  complex  in  the  minds  of  that  considerable  por- 
tion of  his  audience  that  has  already  read  the  plot  of  the  original 
French  play  in  the  newspapers  and  magazines  and  somehow  cannot 
entirely  get  it  out  of  its  mind.  And  still  again,  when  the  American 
adaptor  adapts  the  illegitimate  baby  completely  out  of  the  play,  the 
audience  which  would  have  forgiven  the  heroine's  morals  in  the 
original  manuscript  on  the  ground  that  she  was  now  a  mother  burst- 
ing with  mother-love,  in  the  adaptation  views  the  heroine  as  a 
brazen,  evil-minded  and  selfish  hussy  with  no  morals  at  all  and  ab- 
solutely no  raison  d'etre. 

[69] 


THE   POPULAR    THEATRE 

some  regard  of  the  situation  has  about  it,  to  his  mind, 
something  decidedly  indecent.  This  alone,  of  all 
the  crimes  and  sins  of  the  decalogue,  is  taboo;  this 
alone  must  not  be  laughed  at,  even  by  way  of  simple 
theatre  pastime.  He  sees  nothing  wrong  in  laugh- 
ing himself  half  to  death  over  wholesale  murder  (as 
in  "Kismet")  or  over  wholesale  thievery  (as  in 
"  Officer  666  ")  or  over  wholesale  lying  (as  in  "  The 
Truth  ")  or  over  wholesale  guile  and  deception  (as 
in  "  Charley's  Aunt ")  or  over  wholesale  lawless- 
ness (as  in  "  Turn  to  the  Right "),  but  he  draws  a 
hard  and  fast  line  at  Scarpia  in  cap  and  bells.  And 
so  he  demands  —  or  so  at  least  the  caterers  to  his 
theatrical  taste  imply  he  demands  —  that  when  sex 
intrudes  upon  his  farce  stage  it  be  presented  not  as 
an  act  of  physiology  but  as  an  act  of  Christian  Sci- 
ence. From  this  insistence  comes  the  locally  adapted 
French  farce  like  "  Where  There's  a  Will,"  in  which, 
by  the  terms  of  a  bequest,  a  lady  must  give  birth  to 
an  heir  in  less  than  a  year's  time  and  to  the  consum- 
mation of  that  end  persuades  a  strange  young  man 
to  squeeze  her  hand,  and  the  analogously  edited 
French  farce  like  "The  Beautiful  Adventure"  in 
which  a  man  hopelessly  compromises  a  young  woman 
by  bidding  her  good-night  at  the  threshold  of  her 
boudoir. 

One  merely  increases  nudity  by  draping  it  in  trans- 
parent neglige.  And,  similarly,  these  adaptations 
increase,  rather  than  decrease,  the  alleged  indelicacies 
of  the  originals.  They  amount,  intrinsically,  to  little 
more  than  an  attempt  to  persuade  Little  Willie  to 
believe  in  Santa  Claus  by  dressing  up  his  unmistak- 

[70] 


able  pater  in  absorbent  cotton  and  a  maroon  bath- 
robe. To  imagine  that  the  American  theatregoer 
actually  believes  for  one  moment  that  a  French  hus- 
band is  carrying  on  like  a  lunatic  merely  because  his 
best  friend  has  just  chucked  his  wife  under  the  chin, 
or  that  a  French  married  woman  is  hysterically  con- 
templating throwing  herself  out  of  the  window  be- 
cause she  has  come  in  unexpectedly  and,  through  the 
boudoir  door,  has  caught  sight  of  her  husband  and  a 
gay  actress  from  the  Folies  Bergere  reading  u  La 
Suisse  Famille  Robinson,"  is  surely  going  pretty  far. 
The  truth,  of  course,  is  that  the  American  theatre- 
goer is,  in  this  situation,  much  like  an  eleven-year-old 
child  whose  parents  still  insist  that  the  stork  brings 
the  baby:  he  isn't  absolutely  certain  where  the  baby 
comes  from,  but  he  is  absolutely  certain  that  the  stork 
has  nothing  whatever  to  do  with  the  case ;  and  so  his 
mind  plays  upon  a  number  of  gipsy  chords  —  and 
chiefly  on  the  black  keys.  The  result  is  curiosity, 
smirking,  whispering  behind  the  slate,  stealing 
"  Sapho  "  out  of  the  book-case.  And  the  further  re- 
sult is  a  double  entente  that,  by  the  simple  estimate  of 
mathematics,  is  just  twice  as  ententeful  as  a  direct 
statement  of  fact.  This  is  what  Jacques  Copeau 
should  demonstrate,  and  eloquently,  to  the  more  dis- 
cerning among  American  producers  and  to  the  more 
lettered  members  of  the  American  public. 

And  also  to  the  American  censorship.  Nothing, 
we  are  told,  is  inimical  to  the  moral  welfare  if  one 
can  laugh  at  it.  Why,  then,  a  French  farce  must  be 
adapted  while  a  serious  French  play  may  be  pre- 
sented intact,  is  something  of  an  enigma.  From  the 

[71] 


THE   POPULAR    THEATRE 

point  of  view  of  American  morals,  Bernstein's 
"  L'Elevation  "  is  an  exceptionally  immoral  play.  It 
justifies  adultery  and  makes  a  sympathetic  hero  and 
heroine  of  the  parties  thereto.  And  this  justification 
and  canonization  are  accomplished  with  a  ringing 
and  convincing  rhetoric.  And  yet  it  may  be,  and  is, 
presented  in  America  without  so  much  as  a  trace  of 
the  blue  pencil,  where  such  a  farce  —  a  thing  for 
loud  laughter  alone  —  as  de  Caillavet's  and  de  Flers' 
"  The  King,"  which  even  in  the  original  demonstrates 
that  adultery  has  its  penalties,  apparently  may  not  be 
presented  save  the  adultery  of  the  boudoir  be  modi- 
fied to  a  mere  clandestine  playing  footie  under  the 
dining-room  table. 

The  paradoxical  morality  of  the  entire  business 
becomes  the  more  grotesque  when  one  stops  to  con- 
sider that  the  American  audience  has  become  so  tired 
of  the  French  triangle  drama  a  la  Bernstein  in  which 
middle-aged  married  women  go  astray  and  convince 
the  American  audience  that  there  is  ample  moral 
justification  for  such  an  excursion,  that  the  American 
audience  will  no  longer  bestow  its  custom  upon  that 
drama,  reserving  its  patronage  instead  for  the  French 
triangle  farce  a  la  de  Caillavet  and  de  Flers  in  which 
young  unmarried  women  go  astray  and  convince  the 
American  audience  that  there  is  no  moral  justification 
for  the  excursion.  The  physiological  dereliction  of 
Bernstein's  Suzanne  Cartier,  defended,  explained  and 
exonerated,  it  does  not  stomach,  at  least  to  the  extent 
of  two  dollars;  the  promiscuities  of  de  Caillavet's 
and  de  Flers'  Therese  Manix,  undefended,  unex- 
plained and  lightly  laughed  away,  it  rushes  to  observe 

[72] 


ITS  ADAPTATIONS 

in  such  crowds  that  the  play  becomes  one  of  the  big- 
gest successes  of  an  entire  season.  The  problem  is 
as  fertile  in  eccentricities  as  Richard  Strauss'  "  A 
Hero's  Career."  The  explanation,  if  there  is 
an  explanation,  may  possibly  be  discovered  in 
the  same  native  hypocrisy  which,  in  another  direction, 
permits  the  puritanical  citizen  unblushingly  to  enjoy 
a  piping-hot  Chicago,  A.  D.,  hula-hula  dance  if  only 
the  backdrop  be  painted  up  to  represent  Babylon, 
B.  c.,  and  in  the  matter  closer  to  hand,  permits  him 
to  revel  in  the  forbidden  joys  of  Paul  de  Kock  pro- 
vided only  the  adaptor  tell  him,  with  a  wink,  that  the 
single  ground  for  divorce  in  New  York  State  is  catch- 
ing the  whooping  cough. 

The  projection  of  an  honest  light  upon  the  current 
practises  of  adaptation  is,  as  I  see  it,  the  leading 
white  mark  of  the  Copeau  ambassadorship.  To 
argue  against  this  that  since  he  plays  in  the  French 
tongue  he  will  be  unable  vividly  to  convince  the 
American  audience  is  to  argue  that  since  Mimi 
Aguglia  played  "  Salome  "  in  the  Sicilian  tongue  she 
was  unable  to  convince  the  American  audience  that 
the  play  was  more  sincere  and  effective  in  its  authen- 
tic form  than  it  would  be  were  it  adapted  for  the 
audiences  of  Miss  Ruth  Chatterton.  The  scene  at 
the  close  of  Act  II  of  "  The  King,"  in  its  original 
form,  is  the  same  in  all  languages.  Its  meaning  is 
quite  as  clear  if  the  accompanying  dialogue  is  in  Sans- 
krit as  if  the  words  are  written  in  English.  The 
American  who  doesn't  understand  a  single  word  of 
Russian  has  never  yet  failed,  in  an  alien  theatre,  to 
comprehend  perfectly  the  scene  at  the  conclusion  of 

[73] 


THE   POPULAR    THEATRE 

the  prologue  to  Tolstoi's  "  Resurrection."  The 
American  who  doesn't  know  a  single  word  of  French 
has  never  yet,  in  Paris,  failed  to  understand  the  cen- 
tral episodes  of  "  The  Habit  of  a  Lackey  "  or  "  The 
Sacrifice  "  or  "  Have  You  Anything  To  Declare?  " 
Beyond  this  aspect  of  the  Copeau  enterprise,  I 
can  see  little  to  intrigue  the  experienced  critical  at- 
tention. The  local  swallowing  of  the  gentleman  as 
an  important  Continental  theatrical  figure  is,  in  its 
way,  akin  to  the  like  gulping  in  the  past  of  Gaby 
Deslys  as  a  monarchical  darling,  Doctor  Cook  as  a 
pole  ferret  and  Granville  Barker  as  a  super-Stanis- 
lawsky,  each  as  the  result  of  a  cunning  press-agency. 
As  a  self-advertiser,  Copeau's  only  rival  in  Paris  in 
recent  years  has  been  Henry  Bernstein.  And  still, 
with  all  his  Yankee  talents  in  this  direction,  the  fact 
remains  that  he  actually  created  a  very  meagre  stir 
in  France  during  the  life  of  his  local  theatrical  under- 
taking. There,  as  in  New  York,  his  original  and 
most  striking  artistic  accomplishments  seemed  to  be 
confined  very  largely  to  performances  in  the  pages  of 
ornate  pamphlets.  As  an  obtainer  of  highly  lauda- 
tory endorsements  of  himself,  Copeau  has  indeed 
surpassed  even  Danderine.  But  though  he  is  an  un- 
mistakably intelligent  man  and  though,  like  Barker, 
he  has  a  fine  regard  for  the  best  dramatic  literature  of 
his  country,  he  is  at  bottom,  also  like  Barker,  a  mere 
artist  of  the  theatre  at  second  hand,  a  mere  belated 
mimic  of  Reinhardt,  Craig,  Dumont,  Stanislawsky 
and  even  the  more  remote  Antoine  (who  produced 
Moliere  much  as  Copeau  with  a  flourish  now  pro- 
duces him),  a  man  of  the  theatre  who  still  loudly 

[74] 


ITS  ADAPTATIONS 

revolts  against  those  ideas  of  previous  revolters 
which  the  latter  revolters,  after  practical  experiment, 
have  already  quietly  and  prosperously  abandoned. 

Copeau,  during  the  one  season  of  his  theatre's  ca- 
reer in  Paris,  became  to  Paris  precisely  what  young 
Mr.  Edward  Goodman  and  his  associates  of  the 
Washington  Square  Players  became  in  their  first  sea- 
son to  New  York.  Copeau,  in  all  truth,  has  done 
not  one-half  for  the  French  theatre  what  the  Wash- 
ington Square  Players  have  done  for  the  American. 
The  acting  of  his  company  is  very,  very  much  better 
—  on  this  score  there  is  of  course  no  identification  — 
but  in  the  matter  of  ideas  on  scenic  investiture  and  in 
the  matter  of  drama  and  theory  of  dramatic  interpre- 
tation he  has  shown  himself  by  his  accomplishments 
in  no  direction  and  in  no  degree  superior  to  these,  our 
own  amateurs.  Indeed,  when  one  considers  the 
vastly  deeper  treasury  which  he  has  had  at  his  com- 
mand, his  accomplishments  seem  in  comparison  even 
less.  What  the  somewhat  excited  gentleman  of  the 
Times  contributes  by  way  of  choicest  bouquet  to 
Copeau,  that  "  of  two  things  he  is  very  much  the 
enemy:  of  a  tradition  that  tends  to  mere  routine,  and 
of  any  disposition  to  exploit  externalities  —  from 
tricks  in  scenery  and  costume  to  the  personalities  of 
favourite  actors  —  at  the  expense  of  what  is  deeply 
true  and  beautiful,"  applies  equally  to  the  Washing- 
ton Square  Players,  to  the  Provincetown  Players  and 
to  the  Neighbourhood  Playhouse.  Beautiful  senti- 
ments, praiseworthy  promises.  Indeed,  the  same 
beautiful  sentiments,  the  same  praiseworthy  ideals, 
spoken  by  (and  subsequently  of)  Augustin  Daly  in 

[75} 


THE   POPULAR    THEATRE 

his  prospectus  issued  immediately  after  he  had  signed 
the  lease  for  the  Fifth  Avenue  Theatre  back  in  1869. 
(Fide  "  Life  of  Augustin  Daly,"  by  Joseph  Francis 
Daly.) 

Coming  to  Paris  in  the  season  of  the  life  of  the 
Theatre  du  Vieux  Colombier,  I  found  at  my  hotel  a 
note  from  the  American  playwright,  Hopwood,  for 
whose  theatrical  opinions  I  entertain  a  substantial  re- 
spect, urging  me  to  sojourn  in  the  institution,  as  he 
already  had  done,  and  compare  then  impressions.  I 
spent  considerable  time  in  the  little  theatre,  saw  sev- 
eral very  intertesting  plays  and  a  great  deal  of  non- 
sensical stage  affectation,  saw  numerous  very  dull 
plays  and  a  great  deal  more  of  empty  stage  postur- 
ing, and  ended  up  by  finding  that  Hopwood  had 
found  the  same  things  and  had  come  to  the  same  con- 
clusions —  the  conclusions  similarly  reached  by  the 
many  Frenchmen  of  theatrical  letters  with  whom  the 
enterprise  was  discussed  —  the  conclusions,  to  wit, 
( i )  that  Copeau  was  interesting  to  Paris  chiefly  be- 
cause Paris  was  almost  entirely  ignorant  of  the  new 
methods  of  the  theatre  long  since  familiar  to  the 
other  nations,  (2)  that  he  was,  in  a  way,  the  theat- 
rical fad  of  the  moment  by  virtue  of  his  diplomacy  in 
getting  divers  jour  d'abonnement  parties  to  give  his 
theatre  an  off-boulevard  air,  and  (3)  that  certain  of 
the  plays  in  his  repertoire  were  intrinsically  so  very 
good  that  they  were  successful  in  triumphing  over  the 
affections  which  he  was  superimposing  upon  them. 

The  measure  of  sympathy  that  Copeau  received 
from  the  Parisian  was  identical  with  the  measure  of 
sympathy  the  Washington  Square  Players  have  re- 

[76] 


ITS  ADAPTATIONS 

ceived  from  the  New  Yorker.  And  the  Parisian  in 
this  regard  was  the  same  type  of  Parisian  that  the 
New  Yorker  in  this  regard  is  a  New  Yorker.  Just 
as  the  anti-Broadway  programs  of  the  local  amateurs 
gained  for  them  the  attention  of  a  certain  class  of 
New  Yorkers,  so  the  anti-boulevard  programs  of 
Copeau  gained  for  him  the  attention  of  that  certain 
class  of  Parisians  who,  had  they  been  New  Yorkers, 
would  have  been  the  patrons  of  the  Washington 
Square  Players.  But  Copeau  is  no  more  a  new  Gor- 
don Craig  than  Goodman  of  the  local  amateurs  is  a 
new  Max  Reinhardt.  The  simple  truth  about  Co- 
peau, indeed,  is  that  he  is  a  mere  ghost  of  Craig  in 
a  windsor  tie,  Latin  Quarter  hat  and  baggy  cordu- 
roy trousers.  His  voice  is  his  master's  voice.  To 
ascertain  this,  all  one  need  do  is,  first  to  read  what 
he,  in  his  various  brochures,  calls  his  "  audacious  " 
ideas  on  acting,  scenery,  the  spirit  of  the  author's 
work,  et  cetera,  and  then  turn  back  to  the  files  of 
Craig's  "  Mask  "  wherein,  now  somewhat  covered 
with  the  dust  of  passing  years,  one  may  find  the  same 
ideas  in  very  largely  the  same  words.  Or  to  Mr. 
Moderwell's  book  on  "  The  Theatre  of  Today," 
more  easily  accessible,  in  which  along  toward  page 
one  hundred  and  twenty-eight  one  may  balance 
Copeau's  "  Not  nature,  but  release  the  spirit  of  the 
poet  from  the  text  of  the  play,"  with  Craig's  "  Not 
nature,  but  look  into  the  play  of  the  poet."  And 
Copeau's  antagonism  to  realism  and  championship 
of  style  with  Craig's  "  Not  realism,  but  style."  And 
Copeau's  "  Suppression  of  so-called  stars "  with 
Craig's  "  No  personalities,  but  art."  .  .  .  What 

[77] 


THE   POPULAR    THEATRE 

tempests  of  yesterday!  But  that,  with  all  this,  Co- 
peau  is  a  sagacious  fellow  remains  impressed  upon 
any  one  who  has  first  laid  a  close  eye  to  his  ingenuous 
stage  paraphernalia  and  then  observed  the  canny  way 
he  rolls  up  his  sleeves,  puts  in  his  hands  and  thor- 
oughly convinces  his  clients  that  before  their  very 
eyes  he  is  pulling  out  of  the  paraphernalia  live  artis- 
tic goldfish. 

In  his  ideas  of  stage  embellishment,  Copeau  strings 
along  with  the  school  which  professes  to  believe  that 
the  best  way  to  encourage  the  imagination  is  to  do 
away  with  the  scenery;  in  other  words,  that  the  most 
subtle  way  in  which  to  make  an  audience  imagine  in 
turn  such  scenes  as  the  forest  in  "  As  You  Like  It," 
the  grounds  adjoining  Leonato's  house  in  "  Much 
Ado,"  the  sea-coast  in  "  Twelfth  Night "  and  the  big 
battle  scene  with  Sheridan  riding  to  the  rescue  in 
"  Shenandoah,"  is  not  to  set  the  stage  with  four  dif- 
ferent pictures  representing  respectively  a  forest,  a 
garden,  a  sea-coast  and  a  battlefield,  but  merely  to 
fix  up  the  stage  with  three  tall  white  pillars,  a  couple 
of  jars  of  nasturtium  and  some  blue  velvet  portieres. 
Now,  this  may  be  all  very  well,  but  I  have  as  good  an 
imagination  as  the  next  man  and  yet  I  submit  that 
when  the  program  tells  me  a  scene  is  laid,  as  in  "  Les 
Fourberies  de  Scapin,"  in  a  public  square  in  Naples 
and  Copeau  shows  me  a  stage  adorned  only  with  a 
tapestry-hung  balcony  at  the  back,  supported  by  a 
number  of  imitation  marble  columns  and  decorated 
with  several  pots  of  wisteria,  what  I  imagine  is  less 
a  public  square  in  Naples  than  the  lobby  of  the  Hotel 
Astor. 

.[78] 


ITS   ADAPTATIONS 

The  scenic  affectations  of  such  producers  as  Co- 
peau  are  as  empty,  as  futile  and  as  absurd  as,  on  the 
other  hand,  are  the  scenic  affectations  of  such  pro- 
ducers as  Belasco.  But,  of  the  two  schools,  give  me 
Belasco.  Like  many  another,  I  feel  rather  in  the 
manner  of  a  kindergarten  lad  when  Belasco  asks  me 
to  imagine  a  gentleman's  library  by  showing  me  a 
room  filled  to  the  ceilings  with  lavish  sets  of  Genie 
Holzmeyer,  Hall  Caine  and  O.  Henry  and  with  pas- 
sionate boudoir  lamps  and  reproductions  of  "  Au- 
rora," "  Paul  and  Virginia,"  Edwin  Landseer's 
"  Stag  at  Bay,"  Rosa  Bonheur's  "  Horse  Fair  "  and 
Millet's  "  Angelus  "  in  gold  flowered  frames,  but  it  is 
nevertheless  much  easier  for  me  under  such  circum- 
stances to  get  half-way  to  imagining  a  library  than 
when  Copeau  lifts  his  curtain  and  discloses  to  my  vi- 
sion some  pink  curtains  and  green  screens  that,  only 
five  minutes  before,  he  had  requested  me  to  imagine 
represented  something  like  "  Without  the  Castle,  At 
Inverness." 

The  so-called  New  Scenery  requires,  for  its  com- 
plete practicability  and  effectiveness,  the  great  and 
telling  tact  of  a  first-rate  producer  like  Reinhardt. 
Without  this  tact,  it  becomes  a  mere  affectation,  a 
mere  specious  begging  of  the  question,  like  giving  a 
calico  ball  in  wartime  or  patriotically  knitting  for  the 
soldiers  at  a  Wagner  opera.  As  we  get  it  most  com- 
monly in  America,  with  but  a  few  distinguished  ex- 
ceptions, the  New  Scenery  is  Art  in  the  degree,  and 
in  the  sense,  that  a  new  stack  of  foolscap  is  literature. 


[79] 


Chapter  Six:  Its  Music  Shows 

Of  the  baby  talk  that  pervades  the  native  journal- 
istic theatrical  criticism,  not  the  least  rich  gurgle  is 
that  commonly  achieved  by  the  professors  of  blarney 
in  the  presence  of  a  music  show.  Confronted  with 
an  exhibit  of  stripe  slightly  superior  to  that  wherein 
the  nephew  palms  off  the  burlesque  queen  as  his  wife 
on  the  rich  uncle  from  Rio  de  Janeiro  and  the  pro- 
fessors, a-gush  with  soft  impeachments,  are  forth- 
with beheld  sucking  the  cerebral  forefinger  and  roll- 
ing the  sheepy  pupil.  And  bursting  presently  with 
the  glows  and  agitations  of  the  intoxicating  amour, 
are  further  beheld  seizing  the  hip  and  stepping  forth 
in  brave  soprano  to  exclaim  that  here  again,  thank 
goodness,  is  a  music  show  "  that  does  not  insult  the 
intelligence." 

There  is  in  this  ecstasy  not,  as  one  might  believe, 
merely  the  customary  desire  to  tickle  the  managers 
at  whatever  cost  to  critical  honesty,  but  critical  hon- 
esty itself,  and  of  a  very  sincere  and  devout  kidney. 
For  these  professors  of  the  dailies  still  candidly 
esteem  a  catering  to  intelligence  as  a  virtue  in  the 
music  show,  where  almost  everyone  else,  of  course, 
appreciates  that  a  music  show  that  doesn't  brazenly 
insult  the  intelligence  is  about  as  apposite  and  stimu- 
lating as  an  intellectual  pretty  girl,  or  going  'round 
on  a  carousel  to  the  accompaniment  of  Bach's  B 

[80] 


ITS  MUSIC  SHOWS 

minor  mass,  or  getting  a  slant  on  with  the  kind  of 
man  who  can  tell  off-hand  exactly  who  Karl  Giitz- 
laff  was,  when  and  where  he  was  born,  and  what  were 
his  chief  works. 

Although  the  American  music  show  at  its  best  has 
set  a  standard  for  the  world,  although  in  beauty, 
colour  and  movement  it  marks  the  one  signal  achieve- 
ment of  the  American  theatre,  the  truth  is  that  its 
grave  shortcoming  is  the  presence,  and  even  domi- 
nance, in  it  of  the  very  intellectual  quality  so  unc- 
tuously acclaimed  by  the  journalists.  This  is  the 
precise  quality  one  goes  to  a  music  show  to  avoid, 
since  the  music  show  occupies  to  the  theatre  and 
drama  the  same  relationship  that  the  Cafe  d'Har- 
court  occupies  to  the  Luxembourg,  that  alcohol 
occupies  to  art:  a  convivial  moment  of  forgetful- 
ness,  an  opportunity  to  unbuttom  the  waistcoat  and 
get  chummy  with  the  garc.ons,  a  chance  to  cast  off  re- 
straint and,  in  a  measure,  let  fly  at  the  chandelier. 
And  the  music  show  that  best  serves  this  end  is  cer- 
tainly less  the  music  show  that  vouchsafes  a  coherent 
plot,  symmetrical  lyrics  and  a  musicianly  score  than 
the  music  show  that  vouchsafes  in  the  stead  of  these 
some  imbecile  comic  dialogue  liberally  interspersed 
with  loud  paddlings  of  the  comedian's  seat,  some  bar- 
room scherzi  and  forty  or  fifty  rosy-cheeked  trollops. 

More  often,  however,  the  native  music  show  takes 
itself  with  deadly  seriousness  and  the  result  is  an 
American  music  show  stage  that  actually  is  twice  as 
intellectual  as  the  American  dramatic  stage,  and 
actually  of  three  times  the  comparative  philosophical 
depth.  Take,  in  example,  on  the  side  of  the  native 

[81] 


THE   POPULAR    THEATRE 

dramatic  stage,  the  last  four  plays  of  Mr.  Augustus 
Thomas,  a  playwright  whose  works  may  surely  be 
accepted  as  more  than  merely  a  fair  criterion  of  that 
stage's  intellectual  and  philosophical  attainments. 
These  plays  are  (i)  "  As  a  Man  Thinks,"  (2)  "  In- 
dian Summer,"  (3)  "  Rio  Grande  "  and  (4)  "  The 
Copperhead."  A  scrutiny  of  the  pneumatology  of 
these  opera  produces  the  following  creams.  First, 
"  As  a  Man  Thinks  "  argues  eloquently  (a)  that  a 
woman  who  commits  adultery  is  not  as  pure  in 
morals  as  a  woman  who  does  not  commit  adultery, 
and  (b)  that  if  a  married  woman  commits  adultery, 
her  husband,  if  he  would  thereafter  live  happily  with 
her,  had  best  keep  his  mind  off  the  faux  pas.  Sec- 
ond, "  Indian  Summer  "  establishes  the  fact  that  a 
young  woman  is  generally  grateful  to  an  elderly  man 
whose  self-sacrifices  have  helped  her  father  out  of 
serious  trouble.  Third,  "  Rio  Grande "  demon- 
strates (a)  that  a  girl  married  to  a  man  old  enough 
to  be  her  father  sometimes  seeks  the  love  of  a 
younger  man,  and  (b)  that  her  husband  is  angry 
when  he  finds  out  about  it.  And  fourth,  "  The  Cop- 
perhead "  eulogizes  as  patriot  and  martyr  a  man 
who  brings  ruin  to  his  household,  sends  his  son  to 
the  grave  despising  him  and  causes  his  wife's  death 
rather  than  betray  a  confidence,  and  who  then  eventu- 
ally justifies  himself  in  breaking  the  confidence  on 
the  ground  that  it  threatens  to  keep  his  granddaugh- 
ter from  getting  the  job  of  teacher  in  the  district 
school. 

Take  now,  by  way  of  example  on  the  side  of  the 
musical  stage,  four  typical  shows  presented  during 


ITS  MUSIC  SHOWS 

a  like  space  of  time,  say  such  diversified  exhibitions 
as  "  Madame  Troubadour,"  "  Adele,"  "  Sari  "  and 
something  by  George  Cohan.  A  scrutiny  here  pro- 
duces the  following  philosophies.  First,  where  "  As 
a  Man  Thinks  "  argues  for  the  double  standard  of 
sex,  "  Madame  Troubadour  "  argues  for  the  single 
standard  (surely  a  less  hackneyed  argument  and  one, 
despite  its  age,  more  philosophically  piquing),  and, 
further,  for  the  re-establishment  of  happy  relations 
between  the  offending  woman  and  her  husband  not 
through  so  spurious  a  sentimental  tactic  as  that  ad- 
vanced by  Mr.  Thomas,  but  through  the  less  senti- 
mental and  doubly  sound  motive  advanced  by  Her- 
vieu  in  "  Connais  Toi."  Second,  where  "  Indian 
Summer  "  argues  and  endorses  the  sympathy  of  youth 
with  age  and  age's  sacrifices,  "  Adele,"  after  the 
more  searching  philosophy  of  Nietzsche,  argues  at 
bottom  that  such  sympathy  on  the  part  of  youth 
stands  in  direct  antithesis  to  the  tonic  passions  which 
elevate  the  energy  of  human  beings,  that  it  thwarts 
the  law  of  development  and  evolution,  and  that,  con- 
trary to  the  Thomas  happy-ending  bouquet,  it  is  at 
once  a  multiplier  of  misery  and  a  conservator  of 
misery.  Third,  where  "  Rio  Grande  "  promulgates 
the  news  that  a  young  girl  married  to  an  old  man  is 
often  impelled  to  seek  love  elsewhere  and  that  the 
inevitable  result  is  unhappiness  for  the  man,  "  Sari  " 
admits  the  hoary  platitude  before  the  curtain  goes  up 
and  proceeds  to  work  out  the  philosophy  in  the  more 
sophisticated  terms  of  Boufflers  and  Voltaire.  And 
fourth,  where  "  The  Copperhead  "  interprets  patriot- 
ism as  being  largely  a  logical  reaction,  a  George 

[83] 


THE   POPULAR    THEATRE 

Cohan  show,  with  infinitely  more  acumen,  albeit  pos- 
sibly unintentional,  interprets  it  as  a  reaction  related 
less  to  logic  than  to  pure  feeling  and  emotion. 

This  comparison  of  the  relative  intellectuality  of 
the  serious  drama  and  the  music  show  may  at  first 
glance  seem  absurd;  it  may  appear  that  virtues  have 
been  read  into  the  latter  by  mere  way  of  rounding 
out  a  desired  paradox;  but  this  is  anything  but  true. 
Compare,  without  prejudice,  the  attitude  toward  na- 
tional life,  morals  and  ethical  conduct  of  some  such 
music  show  libretto  as  George  Ade's  "  Sultan  of 
Sulu "  or  Henry  Blossom's  "  Yankee  Consul " 
with  the  attitude  of  some  such  play  as  Thomas'  "  In 
Mizzoura  "  or  Tarkington's  and  Street's  "  Country 
Cousin,"  and  see  which  is  the  sharper,  the  more  illu- 
minating, and  intrinsically  the  sounder.  The  theory 
that  philosophy  always  wears  whiskers  and  never 
smiles  is  a  theory  that  dies  hard,  and  therein  we 
have  the  delusion  that  the  lighter  form  of  theatrical 
entertainment  must  of  necessity  be  generically  of  a 
lesser  thoughtfulness  than  the  dramatic.  Neverthe- 
less, there  is  more  thought,  more  acute  observation 
of  the  contemporary  times  and  manners,  and  more 
sagacious  comment  on  life  in  a  single  music  show 
book  of  the  memorable  Gilbert  than  in  all  the  plays 
Sydney  Grundy,  R.  C.  Carton,  Charles  Klein,  Louis 
N.  Parker,  Alfred  Sutro  and  Charles  Rann  Kennedy 
ever  wrote. 

Such  musical  comedies  as  "  Sari  "  are,  true  enough, 
the  food  of  good  diversion,  but  when  I  say  that  they 
yet  fail  to  meet  the  exact  and  perfect  requirements  of 
the  music  show  stage,  I  by  no  means  overwhelm  my- 

[84] 


ITS  MUSIC  SHOWS 

self  with  an  ambiguity.  A  musical  comedy,  at  best, 
is  the  orphan  of  an  opera.  And  the  person  who  en- 
joys a  musical  comedy  at  its  best  is  the  person  who 
would  much  rather  hear  an  opera  instead.  The 
musical  comedy  is  to  this  person  what  a  snack  in  the 
Amiens  station  room  is  to  the  traveler  on  his  way 
to  Paris  and  dinner  in  the  Cafe  Viel :  the  unsatisfying 
best  that  is  to  be  had  at  the  moment.  The  better 
musical  comedy,  in  a  word,  is  not  a  thing  in  and  of 
itself;  it  is  a  mere  bridge,  a  mere  bite  of  milk  choco- 
late in  transitu,  a  mere  temporary  pulling  in  the  belt  a 
couple  of  notches.  Its  place  on  the  amusement  stage 
—  the  stage  of  the  popular  theatre  —  is  no  more 
authentic  than  would  be  the  place  of  intellectual 
drama  on  the  operatic  stage.  The  popular  stage  is 
rather  the  place  for  the  sort  of  music  show  to  which 
1  have  hitherto  alluded,  the  show  like  "  The  Follies," 
or  like  the  Winter  Garden  entertainments,  or  like 
Fred  Stone's  "  Jack  o'  Lantern  "  and  Hitchcock's 
"  Hitchy-Koo "...  The  critic  who  goes  to  a 
music  show  to  hear  fine  music  and  a  rational  theme 
is  the  critic  who  goes  to  the  Metropolitan  Opera 
House  to  look  at  Mary  Garden's  shape. 

The  trouble  with  our  music  show  stage,  to  repeat, 
is  that  it  is  too  greatly  the  toady  to  rhyme  and  rea- 
son, too  greatly  concerned  with  the  extrinsic  thing 
that  passes  Rialto-wise  for  intelligence.  One  does 
not  visit  a  bordello  to  hear  the  duenna  quote  Karl 
Marx  and  the  professor  play  Rimsky-Korsakoff. 
Nor  does  one  go  to  a  music  show  for  a  Bjornson  plot 
or  the  symphonic  poems  of  a  Liszt.  One  goes,  very 
simply,  to  lay  an  eye  to  warmly  lighted,  brilliantly 

[85] 


THE   POPULAR    THEATRE 

coloured  scenery  and  a  chorus  of  good-looking 
wenches  led  by  some  fancy  imported  houri,  to  some 
such  crazy  drollery  as  Harry  Watson's  imitation  of 
famous  men  like  Mr.  Park,  of  Park  and  Tilford, 
whom  one  always  hears  about  but  never  sees,  to 
osculatory  comedians  climbing  up  the  prima  donna 
on  a  step-ladder,  to  fat  men  and  dancing  girls  and 
makers  of  funny  faces,  and  to  Miss  Justine  John- 
stone  hopping  over  a  brown  canvas  trench  waving  a 
tin  sword  and  putting  to  rout  the  Hun  army. 

Of  all  American  music  show  producers,  none  is  so 
acutely  privy  to  this  secret  as  Mr.  Ziegfeld.  And 
none,  by  the  same  mark,  so  successful.  Where  other 
producers  are  forever  making  laborious  efforts  to  get 
sense  into  their  shows,  this  Ziegfeld  works  might 
and  main  to  get  sense  out  of  his.  To  this  end,  he 
often  deliberately  employs  the  very  best  dullest  libret- 
tists money  can  hire  —  men  like  Mr.  George  V. 
Hobart,  for  example  —  to  fashion  his  exhibits  for 
him.  And  the  result  is  generally  a  show  thoroughly 
to  the  taste  of  the  theatregoer  who  goes  to  a  music 
show  for  what  it  is  and  should  be  and  who,  just  as 
he  has  become  studiously  engrossed  in  Miss  Penning- 
ton's  masterly  interpretation  of  the  hoochie-coochie, 
doesn't  care  to  have  his  researches  interrupted  by  the 
intrusion  of  some  plotty  theorem.  The  libretto  of  a 
Ziegfeld  show  does  not,  in  the  phrase  of  the  journal- 
ists, insult  the  intelligence;  it  merely  lets  the  intelli- 
gence sleep.  And  this  is  precisely  what  the  libretto 
of  a  good  music  show  should  do.  Nor  is  this  greatly 
less  true  on  the  higher  plane.  The  one  striking  flaw 
in  "  The  Chocolate  Soldier  "  is  the  too  provocative 
[86] 


ITS  MUSIC  SHOWS 

book;  it  crowds  altogether  too  harshly  upon  the  beau- 
tiful score. 

The  success  of  a  music  show  may  be  estimated  in 
the  degree  that  it  caters  discreetly  to  masculine  wick- 
edness. Since  such  wickedness  has  been  aptly  de- 
fined as  the  admiration  of  innocence,  the  show  that 
most  cunningly  capitalizes  innocence  is  the  show  that 
most  prosperously  serves  its  ends.  It  is  in  this  very 
enterprise  that  Mr.  Zeigfeld  excels.  Give  him  a 
woman  whose  Awakening  to  Spring  occurred  back  in 
1880  and  who  hasn't  closed  an  eye  since,  and  he  can 
yet  dress  the  archaeologist  up  in  such  a  manner  and 
present  her  in  such  wise  that  she  will  have  the  aspect 
of  Little  Eva.  The  common  error  into  which  this 
impresario's  critics  fall  lies  in  the  belief  that  his  ex- 
hibitions are  successful  because  they  palm  off  intrinsic 
innocence  in  the  light  of  something  slyly  wicked. 
The  truth  of  course  is  that  his  exhibitions  are  success- 
ful —  doubtless  the  most  uniformly  successful  in  the 
world  —  for  precisely  the  opposite  reason.  They 
palm  off  the  intrinsically  wicked  as  something  slyly 
innocent.  If,  as  Mr.  Ziegfeld's  critics  imagine,  his 
shows  habitually  succeed  because  of  their  complete 
lack  of  wickedness  and  correlative  dominance  of  the 
quality  of  innocence,  such  a  thoroughly  innocent 
music  show  as  "  lole,"  a  show  without  so  much  as  a 
trace  of  wickedness,  would  make  twice  the  fortune  of 
the  "  Follies." 

But  this  Ziegfeld  is  not  merely  a  virtuoso  of  vir- 
gins. Just  as  the  enormous  popularity  and  world- 
wide appeal  of  the  "  Merry  Widow  "  waltz  was 
clearly  and  astutely  figured  out  by  Dr.  Stefan  Deliya, 

[87] 


THE   POPULAR    THEATRE 

of  the  Clinical  Hospital  of  Vienna,  in  a  pamphlet 
published  in  1914  by  A.  W.  Kiinast  and  Paul  Knep- 
ler,  so  has  Ziegfeld  worked  out  and  negotiated  the 
Deliya  findings  in  the  matter  of  the  musical  accom- 
paniments to  his  own  shows.  This  secret  of  aphro- 
disiac rhythm  is  one  of  the  underlying  secrets  of  the 
success  of  both  the  "  Follies "  and  the  various 
u  Frolics."  Its  presence  makes  a  Ziegfeld  show  as 
inevitably  as  its  absence  unmakes  a  Morosco  show 
or  a  Cort  show.  For  the  music  show  that  is  a 
music  show  is  the  show  that  loudly  insults  the  intelli- 
gence and  softly  assaults  the  emotions. 


[88] 


Chapter  Seven:  Its  Criticism 

The  business  of  dramatic  criticism,  as  expounded 
by  the  majority  of  our  daily  journals,  is  vigorously 
maintained  to  be  less  an  affidavit  of  the  adventures 
of  a  soul  among  masterpieces  than  the  admirations  of 
a  soul  among  potboilers.  One  of  the  typical  profes- 
sors of  this  academy  is  the  gentleman  who  signs  him- 
self "  Alan  Dale,"  and  into  the  esoteric  metaphysics 
of  the  craft  this  Mr.  quasi-Dale  has  lately  vouch- 
safed the  curious  a  luculent  peep. 

For  thirty  years,  this  gentleman,  with  minor  diver- 
gence, has  fought  fearlessly,  courageously,  and  be- 
yond power  of  threat  or  bribe,  the  battles  of  bad 
taste  and  mediocrity.  With  all  the  skill  at  his  com- 
mand he  has  addressed  himself  assiduously  and  with 
infrequent  failure  to  the  cultivation  of  the  public's 
cheapest  and  most  doggerel  theatrical  predilections. 
He  has  rarely  side-stepped,  rarely  swerved,  rarely 
faltered.  No  play  might  be  so  good  that  his  slap- 
stick was  not  zealously  poised  to  explode  a  torpedo 
of  low  comedy  against  its  trouser-seat;  no  play  so 
bad  that  his  syringe  was  not  perched  betimes  to 
spray  it  with  muscadine  adjectives  and  cologned 
scare-marks.  With  the  fine  fervour  of  the  believer 
in  some  holy  cause,  he  has  often  stood  far  into  the 
night  before  his  mirror  to  compose  his  thumb  at  just 
the  proper  angle  to  his  nose  that  his  public  in  the 

[89] 


THE   POPULAR    THEATRE 

morning  might  learn  how  sufficiently  to  deprecate 
such  a  writer  as  Hauptmann  or  Shaw  or  Galsworthy. 
And  with  a  fervour  not  less  ardent,  he  has  synchro- 
nously sweated,  with  the  sweat  of  a  Mozart  tran- 
scribing Allegri,  over  a  dressing-room  interview  with 
some  Casino  houri  that  his  public  might  appreciate 
exactly  how  much  she  loved  her  Spitz  dog.  Rare 
the  young  American  writer  of  authentic  promise  who 
has  not  been  airily  waved  away  by  Dale,  and  equally 
rare  the  young  American  player  of  authentic  prom- 
ise who  has  not  been  helped  and  encouraged,  if  a 
man,  with  the  amiable  reminder  that  his  ears  stuck 
out  too  much  or,  if  a  woman,  with  a  polite  wheeze  on 
the  similarity  of  her  blonde  hair  to  spaghetti.  And 
even  rarer  still  such  young  and  sincerely  striving  or- 
ganizations as  the  Washington  Square  or  Province- 
town  Players  that  have  not,  at  christening,  been 
sprinkled  with  lordly  and  quipful  pooh-poohs. 

For  thirty  years  this  Mr.  Dale  has  been  tiptoeing 
up  behind  the  drama  and  devilishly  tipping  its  hat 
down  over  its  eyes  and  pulling  theatrical  doorbells 
and  tying  tins  to  pedigreed  tails  and  doubling  up  the 
bed-sheets  and  putting  raisins  on  the  fly-paper.  And 
this  cutting-up  he  has  negotiated  not  in  the  sound 
spirit  of  a  good  healthy  boy,  but  in  the  spirit  of  some 
kittenish  Abigail,  some  sciatical  papa  larking  with  the 
youngsters  on  an  eternal  Allhallow-e'en.  His  com- 
edy, on  such  occasions,  has  been  not  the  light  -and  let- 
tered humour  that  coats  the  best  of  criticism  nor  yet 
the  higher  wit  that  sharpens  it  and  forces  it  fully 
home,  nor  even  yet  the  broad,  robustious  humour 
that  at  times  best  suits  the  appraisal  of  lowly  things, 

[90] 


ITS   CRITICISM 

but  the  sort  of  humour  rather  that  proceeds  from  the 
comparison  of  something  or  other  with  a  Limburger 
cheese  or  from  some  such  observation  as  "  '  Way 
Down  Yeast '  ought  to  get  a  rise  out  of  everybody." 
The  sort  of  humour,  in  short,  whose  stock  company 
has  been  made  up  largely  of  bad  puns,  the  spelling  of 
girl  as  "  gell,"  the  surrounding  of  every  fourth  word 
with  quotation  marks,  such  bits  as  "  legs  —  er,  oh  I 
beg  your  pahdon  — •  I  should  say  '  limbs,'  "  a  fre- 
quent allusion  to  prunes  and  to  pinochle,  and  an  em- 
ployment of  such  terms  as  scrumptious  and  bong-tong. 
In  view  of  the  manner  in  which  Mr.  Dale  has  over 
this  long  period  conducted  himself,  in  view  of  his 
shave-parlour  jocosity  and  yokel  affections  of  arbiter- 
ship  and  apparent  insensibility  to  the  finer  things  of 
the  American  theatre,  a  considerable  portion  of  even 
that  humble  West  Forty-second  Street  audience  at 
which  his  writings,  and  writings  of  a  piece  with  his, 
are  aimed,  has  been  prone  to  regard  him  as  one  of 
the  usual  mirthless  Andrews  who,  slightly  to  adapt 
Dr.  Johnson,  have  taken  up  reviewing  plays  as  a 
profession  by  which  they  may  grow  important  and 
formidable  at  very  small  expense.  Wherefore,  pic- 
ture the  surprise  of  this  Broadway  element,  the  same 
element  that  has  — •  and  not  improperly  —  at  times 
barred  Mr.  Dale,  the  play  reviewer,  from  its  thea- 
tres, when  this  same  Mr.  Dale,  turned  playwright, 
discloses  a  play  from  his  own  hand,  and  a  first  play, 
that  is  seen  in  the  main  to  be  not  only  an  intelligent, 
well-written  and  dignified  piece  of  work,  but,  to  boot, 
a  play  for  the  most  part  superior  to  the  majority  of 
Broadway-made  opera  which  for  three  decades  he 

[90 


THE   POPULAR    THEATRE 

has  been  reviewing.  The  conclusions,  plainly 
enough,  are  two :  either  that  Mr.  Dale  in  his  profes- 
son  of  play  reviewer  has  for  thirty  years  been  sell- 
ing his  birthright  for  a  mess  of  ashcan  notoriety,  or 
that  the  case  of  Mr.  Dale  establishes  once  more  the 
fact  that  it  is  ever  infinitely  a  more  difficult  thing  to 
write  good  dramatic  criticism  than  to  write  good 
drama.  And  of  these  conclusions,  it  is  the  second 
that  at  the  moment  intrigues  me  the  more. 

The  unfortunate  thing  about  this  second  conclusion 
is  that,  while  it  is  perfectly  sound,  it  has  yet  about  it 
the  pert  aspect  of  silly  paradox,  an  aspect  which 
brings  it  skeptically  to  be  smiled  away  and  generally 
to  be  doubted  as  are  doubted  such  equally  sound,  if 
superficially  as  dubious,  conclusions  that  it  is  in- 
finitely more  tiring  to  watch  a  one-ring  circus  than  a 
two-ring  circus  and  that  a  cigar  which  tastes  sweet  in 
the  shadow  tastes  bitter  immediately  one  steps  into 
the  sunlight.  And  yet  its  integrity  is  not  difficult  of 
appraisal.  In  the  history  of  the  theatre  and  dra- 
matic literature,  how  many  the  names  of  dramatic 
critics  that,  in  comparison  with  the  names  of  mere 
dramatists,  have  survived  time?  Think  of  more 
than  a  dozen  or  so,  from  Aristotle  to  Archer,  if  you 
can!  For  every  hundred  men  who  have  succeeded 
in  writing  good  drama  you  will  be  at  pains  to  discover 
a  single  one  who  has  succeeded  in  writing  good  dra- 
matic criticism.  And  the  ratio  becomes  all  the  more 
impressive  when  one  considers  that  where  one  man 
tries  to  write  drama  a  hundred  men  try  to  write 
criticism. 

Criticism,  for  all  the  notable  spicy  epigrams  to 

[92] 


ITS   CRITICISM 

the  contrary,  plainly  calls  upon  a  vastly  higher  series 
of  attainments  and  accomplishments  than  playwrit- 
ing.  To  write  a  single  first-rate  play,  a  man  needs 
but  to  have  observed  and  assimilated  a  single  mood 
and  phase  of  life  and  but  the  imaginative  writing 
skill  to  present  that  single  mood  and  phase  of  life  in 
terms  sufficiently  of  the  theatre  to  make  it  sym- 
pathetically understandable  to  a  variable  number  of 
first-rate  persons  grouped  together  in  a  single  body. 
To  write  this  fine  play,  the  man  need  necessarily  have 
no  professional  knowledge  of  what  is  precisely  known 
as  dramatic  technique,  and  no  experience  and  prac- 
tice in  its  maneuvering,  as  witness,  in  example,  the 
case  in  embryo  of  Dunsany  or  the  case  of  Dr. 
Schnitzler  or  the  case  of  John  Galsworthy.  Or,  on  a 
lower  but  nonetheless  still  authentic  level,  the  case  of 
the  London  typist  who  wrote  the  play  called 
"  Chains,"  the  case  of  the  Welsh  lad  who  wrote 
"  Change,"  and  the  data  of  several  of  the  young 
Irish  group.  Further,  to  write  this  single  memor- 
able play,  the  man  need  not  necessarily  be  widely 
traveled,  widely  read,  deeply  and  broadly  educated; 
he  may  indeed  be  as  a  sitter  in  a  far  and  lonely 
tower  and  the  play  but  the  transcript  of  a  single  ad- 
venturing into  the  outer  world.  As  witness  the  rec- 
ord of  the  remote  and  humble  genius  of  a  day,  as 
Hastings  alludes  to  him,  who  gave  forth  "  Pathelin  " 
and  faded  then  from  the  earth.  But  to  write  a 
single  piece  of  living,  first-rate  criticism  of  a  first- 
rate  play,  a  man  must  have  within  his  grasp  the 
sweep  of  all  the  literatures  and  all  the  traditions  of 
all  the  stages  of  the  world.  This  one  piece  of  first- 

[93] 


THE   POPULAR    THEATRE 

rate  criticism  must  automatically  be  builded  upon 
what  remains  of  the  man's  findings  from  all  the  first- 
rate  criticism  that  has  gone  before,  and  it  must,  if  it 
would  survive,  be  superior  to  such  prevenient  criti- 
cism. Any  one  may  copy  Brunetiere  and  die  the 
next  day  unknown.  To  live  on,  one  must  improve 
on  him  and  advance  him. 

Dramatic  criticism,  unlike  dramatic  composition, 
demands  without  exception  a  knowledge  of  all  drama, 
all  human  nature.  It  may  not,  like  drama,  concern 
itself  alone  with  an  imaginative  or  photographic  unit; 
it  must  be  all-embracing,  all-comprehensive.  The 
writing  of  a  "  Romeo  and  Juliet "  requires  a  very 
great  genius;  but  the  writing  of  a  criticism  of  a 
"  Romeo  and  Juliet "  that  shall  endure  as  the  play 
endures,  requires  clearly  a  greater  genius  still.  .  .  . 
Dryden,  by  his  own  confession,  found  his  critical 
"  Essay  of  Dramatic  Poesy  "  a  vastly  more  difficult 
labour  than  his  drama  "  All  For  Love."  Pinero  has 
written  some  excellent  plays,  but  his  serious  attempts 
at  dramatic  criticism  have  been  less  than  negligible. 

Again,  the  dramatist,  even  in  his  appeal  to  souls  of 
the  highest  understanding,  enjoys  an  obvious  and  dis- 
tinct advantage  over  the  critic  in  that  he  makes  his 
appeal  to  these  persons  in  groups,  that  is  to  say,  when 
they  are  members  of  an  organized  crowd  in  a  theatre, 
subject  to  that  sometimes  confounding  condition 
which  our  friend  Le  Bon  describes  as  the  collective 
mind  and  emotionalism,  and  so  to  a  considerable 
degree  vacated  —  in  this  instance  volitionally  —  of 
individuality,  mentality  and  clarity  of  percep- 
tion. The  critic,  to  the  contrary,  not  only  tackles 

.[94] 


ITS   CRITICISM 

these  souls  of  the  highest  understanding  singly,  one 
by  one,  but  he  tackles  them,  to  boot,  after  their  opin- 
ions on  the  drama  in  point  have  been  more  or  less 
violently  coloured  in  one  direction  or  another  through 
the  group  contagion  above  alluded  to.  Thus,  where 
the  dramatist  deals  directly  with  an  audience  auto- 
matically already  halfway  within  his  grip,  and  ready 
and  eager  to  be  impressed,  the  critic,  on  the  other 
hand,  deals  indirectly  with  an  audience  automatically 
already  halfway  out  of  his  grip,  and  indifferent  and 
reluctant  to  be  impressed.  The  dramatist  tilts  easily 
against  human  nature's  softest  spot,  to  wit,  the  emo- 
tions; the  critic  desperately  against  the  toughest,  to 
wit,  the  intellect. 

Here,  of  course,  I  speak  of  the  real  criticism. 
But,  dropping  ten  thousand  stories  to  the  Broadway 
species  of  "  criticism,"  one  still  finds  that,  even  on  this 
lowly  plane,  what  is  true  on  the  superior  plane  is  here 
possibly  also  true.  I  say  possibly,  for  I  am  at  once 
sadly  uninterested  in  and  happily  ignorant  of  both 
phases  of  this  latter  business,  of  both  the  Broadway 
criticism  and  the  manufacture  of  the  Broadway 
yokel-yanker,  and  so  hesitate  to  present  my  opinions 
on  either  in  too  positive  a  manner.  However,  let 
us,  for  example  in  inquiry,  take  Mr.  Dale's  own  case. 
Mr.  Dale,  in  his  play,  "  The  Madonna  of  the  Fu- 
ture," has  written,  as  I  have  already  noted,  a  piece 
very  much  above  the  Broadway  general.  It  dis- 
closes a  sense  of  style,  a  consistently  polished  man- 
ner, a  feeling  for  word  and  phrase;  its  theme  is 
viewed  through  the  glasses  of  a  man  possessed  of  a 
certain  pleasant  measure  of  cultural  background  and 

[95] 


THE   POPULAR    THEATRE 

expounded  in  well  thought  out  and  effective  vein ;  its 
net  impression  is  of  a  piece  of  writing  designed  by  a 
presentable  gentleman  for  a  presentable  audience. 
But  turn  now  to  the  playwright's  review  of  his  own 
play,  a  criticism  —  it  is  surely  fair  to  assume  —  he 
pondered  carefully  and  executed  with  the  best  of  cun- 
ning and  skill  at  his  beck.  What  does  one  find  in 
this  criticism?  One  finds,  to  put  it  mildly,  not  only 
nothing  by  way  of  genuine  criticism,  but  absolutely 
nothing  that  would  indicate  its  penman  to  have  the 
remotest  accurate  notion  about  the  merits  and  de- 
merits of  his  own  play  or  about  the  mould  of  drama 
with  which  it  is  in  species  identified  or  about  the  man- 
ner of  dramatic  writing  which  it  negotiates  or  about 
even  those  perfectly  patent  elements  in  the  popular 
drama  out  of  whose  womb  certain  of  its  own  ele- 
ments have  been  brought  to  life. 

A  single  point  in  Mr.  Dale's  review  of  his  play  is 
amply  illuminative  of  Mr.  Dale's  nescience  as  a  play 
reviewer  and  will  suffice  to  reveal  the  character  of 
what  precedes  and  follows.  "  I  am  going  to  credit 
myself,"  writes  Mr.  Dale  in  his  review,  "  with  a  new 
idea  —  an  idea  up  to  the  very  moment — an  idea 
that  may  seem  shocking  and  s-tartling  —  to  those  who 
like  to  be  shocked  and  startled  —  but  one  that  is  be- 
ing rushed  along  on  the  breeze  of  this  portentous  to- 
day. Has  a  woman,  who  has  wealth,  position,  bril- 
liant notions  on  the  subject  of  bringing  up  a  son  to  be 
a  credit  to  his  country  —  has  this  woman  a  right  to 
become  a  mother  without  marriage,  if  she  does  not 
care  for  the  idea  of  marriage  and  looks  on  it  as  super- 
fluous?" 

[96] 


ITS   CRITICISM 

Aside  from  the  somewhat  peculiar  literary  com- 
plexion of  the  paragraph  —  and  in  passing  observe, 
please,  its  solemn  seriousness  —  what  of  it  so  far  as 
it  affords  insight  into  Mr.  Dale's  equipment  as  a  play 
reviewer,  a  reviewer  of  even  the  plays  of  Tin-Pot 
Alley?  What  of  this  amazing  idea  which  Mr.  Dale 
announces,  with  a  warm  self-congratulatory  shake  of 
the  hand,  to  be  "  new,"  "  up  to  the  very  momnet," 
"  shocking"  and  "  startling?  "  Ellen  Key?  Even 
Mr.  Dale,  further  along  in  his  personal  eloge,  re- 
luctantly allows  that  the  old  girl  toyed  with  it  in 
her  remote  day.  But  old  ideas,  in  all  fairness,  seem 
often  new  ideas  when  they  are  spread  out  upon  the 
stage,  and  what  of  Mr.  Dale's  new,  up-to-the-very- 
moment  idea  so  far  as  is  concerned  the  contemporary 
stage  about  which  surely  he  ought,  as  a  play  reviewer, 
know?  Has  Mr.  Dale  forgotten  the  exposition  of 
"  Man  and  Superman  "  and  the  scene  between  Vio- 
let and  Tanner  and  the  latter's  "  They  know  you  are 
right  in  their  hearts,  though  they  think  themselves 
bound  to  blame  you  by  their  silly  superstitions  about 
morality  and  propriety  and  so  forth.  But  I  know, 
and  the  whole  world  really  knows,  though  it  dare 
not  say  so,  that  you  were  right  to  follow  your  in- 
stinct (i.  e.,  to  have  a  baby) ;  that  vitality  and  bravery 
are  the  greatest  qualities  a  woman  can  have,  and 
motherhood  her  solemn  initiation  into  womanhood; 
and  that  the  fact  of  your  not  being  legally  married 
matters  not  one  scrap  either  to  your  own  worth  or 
to  our  real  regard  for  you  "?  And  much  the  same 
business  in  the  same  dramatist's  subsequent  "  Getting 
Married  "?  And  much  the  same  business,  in  more 

[971 


THE   POPULAR    THEATRE 

solemn  vein,  in  certain  ironical  passages  of  Schmidt- 
bonn's  "Help!  A  Child  Has  Fallen  From 
Heaven!  "...  And  what  of  the  al  fresco  fulmina- 
tions  of  the  Michaelis  who  stems  from  Key?  And 
of  Professor  William  Isaac  Thomas?  And  of 
Mme.  Anna  Howard  Shaw?  Mr.  Dale's  new  idea, 
he  should  in  sooth  know,  is  approximately  as  new 
as  the  idea  of  Stanley  Houghton's  "  Hindle  Wakes," 
which  idea,  unless  I  am  much  mistaken,  Mr.  Dale  in 
his  capacity  of  play  reviewer  held  similarly  to  be 
" up-to-the-very-moment,"  "startling,"  et  cetera, 
wnen  the  idea  had  already  been  done  theatrically  to 
death  by  David  Graham  Phillips  in  his  play  "  The 
Worth  of  a  Woman,"  and  by  Max  Dreyer  in  "  The 
Pastor's  Daughter  of  Streladorf,"  and  by  Alfred 
.Capus  in  "The  Wounded  Bird,"  and  by  Hjalmar 
Bergstrom  in  "  Karen  Borneman,"  and  numerous 
others. 

If  meritorious  plays  like  Mr.  Dale's  "  Madonna 
of  the  Future  "  fail  to  prosper  in  the  American  popu- 
lar theatre  as  feeble  and  empty  plays  like  "  The 
Lion  and  the  Mouse  "  and  "  Common  Clay  "  richly 
prosper,  it  is  to  no  little  degree,  and  by  way  of  boom- 
erang, the  fault  of  such  play  reviewers  to  the 
American  public  as  Mr.  Dale.  That  these  news- 
paper commentators  have  a  wide  influence  on  popu- 
lar taste  is  as  futile  a  denial  as  would  be  a  disbelief 
in  newspaper  influence  itself.  And  that  they  many 
of  them  debase  this  influence  and  that  they  many  of 
them  thereby  grossly  debase  the  popular  taste  by 
cadeting  to  that  taste,  but  makes  to  defer  on  end  the 
happier  day  when  the  popular  theatre  shall  prefer 

[98] 


ITS   CRITICISM 

the  gentlemanly  wit  and  humour  of  a  play  like  Mr. 
Dale's  to  the  cheap  gutter  badinage  of  certain  other 
easily  recalled  plays  which  Mr.  Dale  and  psuedo- 
critics  like  him  have  fulsomely  recommended  to  the 
public. 


[99] 


Chapter  Eight:  Its  Imagination 

The  person  who  reads  a  play  and  takes  himself 
then  to  see  it  acted  in  the  theatre  goes  never  to  ob- 
serve the  superiority  (or  even  parity)  of  the  inter- 
preters' imagination  Jo  his  own,  but  rather  always  to 
observe  in  what  remote  degree  the  interpreters  them- 
selves, and  the  imagination  of  the  interpreters,  are 
successful  in  approaching  the  results  of  his  own  im- 
agination. When,  for  example,  a  man  reads  \  the 
novel  "  A  Prisoner  of  Zenda  "  and  visualizes  to  him- 
self its  Flavia  as  a  lovely  compound  of  whipped  cream 
and  pansies,  he.  enters  a  theatre  assuredly  not  in  the 
nope  of  seeing  a  heroine  who  surpasses  —  or  even 
measures  up  to  —  his  picture,  but  in  the  fond  trust 
that  the  actress  assigned  to  depict  the  heroine  will 
not  be  quite  so  much  the  pie-face  as  usual.  In  a" 
word,  the  theatre  in  such  cases  is  a  place  to  which  one 
goes  less  in  the  hope  of  complete  illusion  than  in 
the  hope  of  being  only  half-way  disillusioned. 

To  read  a  play,  and  to  go  then  to  the  playhouse 
to  see  it  acted,  is  much  like  marrying  a  woman  before 
proposing  to  her.  In  reading  a  play,  the7  imagina- 
tion of  the  reader  is  limitless;  in  seeing  th$  same  play 
acted,  his  imagination  is  more  often  bounded  in  the 
front  by  a  Mediterranean  sky  that  nine  times  in  ten 
is  rich  in  grease-spots  and  fly-specks;  on  the  right  by 
[100] 


ITS  IMAGINATION 

the  spectacle  of  a  Sinn  Feiner  in  shirt-sleeves  making 
ready  to  shift  the  scenes;  on  the  left  by  a  marble 
villa  through  the  centre  canvas  seam  of  which  one 
detects  the  stage-manager  chewing  a  slice  of  plug  cut; 
and  in  the  back  by  a  catarrhal  old  party  who  persists 
in  sticking  the  toe  of  his  shoe  simultaneously  through 
the  rear  aperture  in  the  seat  and  into  the  rear  person 
of  the  spectator.  Glancing  up,  in  the  library,  from 
the  printed  book  of  the  play,  the  dreaming  vision 
may  dally,  without  hindrance  or  interruption,  in  the 
sweet  fields  of  fancy,  and  there  sniff  deliciously  the 
scent  of  imaginative  blooms.  In  the  theatre,  the 
dreaming  vision  is  called  upon  to  dally  across  a  field 
of  baldheads  and  there  sniff  deliciously  the  scent 
of  Newbro's  Herpicide.  Imagination  thrives  upon 
^solitude.  In  a  crowd,  it  is  dismayed,  lost.  One 
doesn't  dream  in  Times  Square. 

Says  Coleridge,  "  Stage  presentations  are  to  pro- 
duce a  sort  of  temporary  half-faith,  which  the  spec- 
tator encourages  in  himself  and  supports  by  a  volun- 
tary contribution  on  his  own  part,  because  he  knows 
that  it  is  at  all  times  in  his  power  to  see  the  thing  as 
it  really  is.  Thus  the  true  stage  illusion  as  to  a 
forest  scene  consists  not  in  the  mind's  judging  it  to 
be  a  forest,  but  in  its  remission  of  the  judgment  that 
it  is  not  a  forest."  The^printed  play/ on  the  other 
hand,  interposes  no  such  obstacles  to  a  complete 
faith.  '  The  forest  scene  which  the  reader  pictures  to 
himself  is  as  real,  and  as  vivid,  as  an  actual  forest; 
indeed,  often  much  more  vivid.  And  the  lion  prowl- 
ing therein  growls  as  ominously  in  his  imagination  as 
ever  a  live  lion  growled  in  actuality.  In  the  theatre, 

[IOJ] 


THE   POPULAR    THEATRE 

the  same  person,  viewing  the  forest  scene,  in  effect 
says  (subconsciously)  to  himself,  "  This,  of  course, 
isn't  a  forest,  but  they  charged  me  two  dollars  and 
a  twenty  cent  war  tax  to  believe  it  is  a  forest,  so,  to 
get  my  money's  worth,  I  shall  for  the  next  half  hour 
believe  it  is  a  forest."  And  as  to  the  lion,  "  That 
would  be  a  lion  if  it  wasn't  Phil  Dwyer  in  a  lion's 
skin,  and  that  would  be  a  lion's  roar  if  it  wasn't  old 
Phil  tooting  a  Klaxon  auto-horn." 

The  library  chair,  however  hard,  has  in  it  the 
illusion  of  a  thousand  Reinhardts,  a  thousand  Bern- 
hardts.  In  its  cozy  harbour,  the  moon  that  sweeps 
over  the  desert  in  "  Caesar  and  Cleopatra  "  is  a  moon 
of  far  and  wistful  mysteries:  not,  as  in  the  theatre, 
a  partly  visible  bunchlight  at  R  2  with  a  purple  gela- 
tine slide  in  front  of  it.  In  its  warm  recesses,  the 
Kathi  of  "  Old  Heidelberg  "  is  the  Kathi  of  every 
man's  youth,  the  Kathi  with  sunshine  for  hair  and 
pink  and  white  chamois  for  cheeks  and  forget-me- 
nots  for  eyes  and  lips  that  seem  always  to  have  just 
said  If  —  the  Kathi  of  long-ago,  warm,  starlit,  uni- 
versity nights:  not,  as  viewed  upon  the  stage,  an 
actress  well  beyond  thirty-five  in  what  is  obviously  a 
blonde  wig  and  an  equally  obvious,  and  apparently 
painful,  straight-front  corset.  Sentiment,  too,  thrives 
on  solitude.  The  library  lamp  warms  it  into  life  as 
the  sun  warms  to  life  the  flowers.  It  is  slightly  more 
than  difficult  to  persuade  sentiment  to  flit  across  one's 
fancy  in  the  theatre  when  one  considers  under  his 
conscience  that  the  delicate  stage  address  is  syn- 
chronously to  the  two-hundred-and-ten  pound  mam- 
mal seated  on  one's  right. 


ITS  IMAGINATION 

Sentiment  is,  very  largely,  the  language  of  what 
might  have  been.  Its  feet  of  cobwebs  rest  most 
firmly  on  the  empty  air.  The  bachelor  of  forty, 
reading  "  When  We  Were  Twenty-One  "  under- 
neath the  amber  lamp,  somehow  sees  himself  as  Dick 
Carewe,  also  bachelor  of  forty.  He  sees,  some- 
how, Phyllis  as  the  girl  who  once  on  a  time  meant  so 
much  to  him,  and  hears  somehow  her  "  Again  and 
always,  I  love  you  "  as  whispered  not  to  Carewe  but, 
down  the  years,  to  himself.  And  then  he  goes  to  the 
theatre.  And  there  he  holds  Carewe  in  the  bogus 
figure  of  Nat  Goodwin,  who  somehow  doesn't  look  at 
all  as  he  does,  and  Phyllis  —  his  Phyllis  of  unchang- 
ing nineteen  —  in  the  person  of  the  cold,  Hellenic  El- 
liott, who  may  be  beautiful  in  a  way  but  who  isn't  his 
Phyllis  of  the  amber  lamp  at  all.  The  personal  ele- 
ment, the  element  that  was  as  an  aperitif  to  his  im- 
agination in  the  reading  of  the  play,  is  here  in  the 
theatre  completely  lacking.  .  .  .  And  the  draught 
from  Exit  No.  6  is  hitting  him  in  the  back  of  the 
neck.  .  .  .  And  a  brat  is  bawling  in  the  balcony.  .  .  . 
And  a  sordid  party  in  the  next  seat  is  telling  his  com- 
panion that  business  is  awful  rotten  this  year  in 
Cincinnati.  .  .  . 

Love  is  beautiful  in  the  degree  that  its  depth  makes 
it  inarticulate.  A  love  scene  has  melody  for  the 
reading  ear  since  its  song  is  sung  only  in  the  silences 
of  the  imagination.  Heard  in  the  theatre,  and  fil- 
tered through  a  modish  Boston  cockney  on  the  female 
side  and  an  equally  tony  Broadway  patois  on  the 
male,  it  produces  the  effect  of  "  Romeo  and  Juliet " 
played  with  a  dull  needle. 

[J°3] 


THE   POPULAR    THEATRE 

"  Plays,"  wrote  Anatole  France,  "  show  every- 
thing, and  dispense  with  the  imagination.  .  .  .  That 
is  why  they  do  not  please  dreamy  and  meditative 
minds.  Such  people  love  ideas  only  for  the  melodi- 
ous echo  which  they  awaken  in  themselves.  .  .  . 
They  prefer  the  active  joy  of  reading  rather  than 
the  passive  pleasure  of  shows.  .  .  .  Every  word  of 
a  book  is  a  mysterious  finger  which  touches  a  fibre 
of  our  brain  like  the  string  of  a  harp.  ...  It  is 
not  so  in  the  theatre.  For  the  fine  type  used  in  print- 
ing, which  leaves  so  much  to  be  divined,  is  substituted 
men  and  women  in  whom  there  is  nothing  vague  or 
mysterious.  Everything  there  is  exactly  deter- 
mined." Determined,  and  upset!  There,  the  lit- 
tle Mimsey  of  "  Peter  Ibbetson  "  cruelly  grows  up 
to  weigh  one  hundred  and  ninety  odd  pounds. 
There,  Trilby  is  devastatingly  revealed  as  a  counter- 
part of  Connie  Ediss,  and  suffering  from  asthma. 
There,  General  Phil  Sheridan,  riding  breathless  over 
twenty  miles  to  the  Federal  rescue,  is  presently  dis- 
closed to  the  flabbergasted  patriotic  gaze  as  being 
none  other  than  the  Confederate  captain  whose  part 
ended  in  the  previous  act  and  who  now  seems  to  be 
masquerading  in  a  Union  suit.  The  roses  that,  in  a 
reader's  imagination,  fill  and  perfume  the  garden  of 
a  Dorothy  Vernon,  on  the  stage  are  metamorphosed 
by  the  property  man  into  two  meticulously  straight 
rows  of  stiff  artificial  geranium,  somewhat  soiled 
after  the  week's  engagement  in  Pittsburgh.  The 
lonely  sail  that  in  the  glow  of  the  library  lamp  glides 
smoothly  across  the  horizon,  on  the  stage  is  beheld 
hiccoughing  its  way  against  the  backdrop.  And  the 
[104] 


ITS   IMAGINATION 

windblown  hair  of  Hope  Langham,  standing  at  the 
rail  of  the  coast  steamer  off  the  harbour  of  Bizerta,  is 
held  at  the  appropriate  windblown  length  by  a  more 
or  less  visible  black  thread.  And  Prince  Charming 
has  to  slide  the  little  glass  slipper  into  his  pocket  and 
slyly  sneak  out  a  more  likely  No.  7  B,  as  he  kneels  to 
adjust  it  to  Cinderella's  all  too  human  foot.  And 
one  can  detect  the  De  Long  hooks  and  eyes  that 
fasten  the  fairy  queen's  tights.  .  .  . 

'  The  beautiful,"  said  Baudelaire,  "  is  something 
ardent  and  sad,  something  vague,  lending  a  field  to 
conjecture."  The  stage,  in  sooth,  lends  no  such 
field.  It  sets  as  barriers  before  the  vagrant  imagina- 
tion —  as  breakwaters  against  a  gipsy  fancy  —  a 
vast  force  of  beauty  snipers  in  the  shape  of  such 
things  as  one-candle-power  incandescent  bulb  fire- 
flies, greenish  maroon  sunsets,  actors  in  one-button 
dress  waistcoats,  and  moons  that  flicker  like  a  co- 
quette's eyelid.  It  is  of  concrete  things,  mechanical 
things,  painted  things,  all  compact.  So,  indeed,  that 
one  may  in  a  measure  sympathize  with  Tolstoi's  chill 
record  of  a  trip  to  "  Siegfried."  "  When  I  arrived," 
said  Tolstoi,  "  an  actor  sat  on  the  stage  amid  dec- 
orations intended  to  represent  a  cave  and  which,  as 
is  always  the  case,  produced  the  less  illusion  the  bet- 
ter they  were  constructed.  He  was  dressed  in  woven 
tights,  with  a  cloak  of  skins,  wore  a  wig  and  an  arti- 
ficial beard,  and  with  white,  weak,  genteel  hands  (his 
easy  movements,  and  especially  the  shape  of  his  stom- 
ach and  his  lack  of  muscle,  revealed  the  actor)  beat 
an  impossible  sword  with  an  unnatural  hammer  in  a 
way  in  which  no  one  ever  uses  a  hammer;  and  at  the 


THE   POPULAR    THEATRE 

same  time  opening  his  mouth  in  a  strange  way,  he 
sang  something  which  was  wholly  incomprehensible." 
For  much  of  this  annihilation  of  romance  and  il- 
lusion, of  course,  the  theatre  has  but  itself  to  blame. 
It  becomes  a  doubled  difficulty  to  believe  that  the  fel- 
low playing  Hubert  Sinclair,  the  fell  knave,  is  the 
desperado  the  playwright  would  urge  us  imagine 
when  in  the  very  program  of  the  play  one  glimpses  a 
page  advertisement  displaying  a  halftone  of  Hubert 
in  real  life,  seated  peacefully  in  a  chair  with  his  three 
youngest  children  in  his  lap  and  with  his  wife  bend- 
ing affectionately  over  his  bald  head,  and  the  mean- 
while listening  wistfully  to  a  Victrola  playing  "  Lead, 
Kindly  Light."  And  so,  too,  is  it  anything  but  easy 
to  obey  the  dramatist  and  imagine  the  young  woman 
playing  the  role  of  a  convent  girl  as  so  innocent  and 
unworldly  that  butter  wouldn't  melt  in  her  mouth 
when  the  night  before  one  has  glimpsed  the  chicken 
in  a  somewhat  elevated  condition  prancing  around 
the  dance  floor  of  the  Knickerbocker  Grill  with  the 
actor  playing  the  role  of  the  bishop.  It  is  clearly 
but  the  restatement  of  platitude  to  suggest  the  dam- 
age that  has  been  done  the  mimic  world  by  these,  its 
own  tactics.  But  illusion  is  a  tender  thing,  as  deli- 
cate as  a  violet  leaf,  and  the  slightest  touch  from 
earthy  hands  sends  it  packing;  and  once  gone,  it  goes 
never  to  return.  It  baffles  recapture  as  a  vanished 
dream  baffles  recapture,  or  as  an  indiscreet  letter  that 
has  already  been  dropped  into  the  box,  or  as  a  lovely 
maiden  to  whom  once,  in  a  wild,  careless  and  un- 
thinking moment,  one  has  said  "  I  love  you,"  in  Ger- 
man. 
[106] 


ITS   IMAGINATION 

Illusion  is  to  the  theatre  what  half-lights  are  to  the 
woman  on  the  further  side  of  thirty-two.  The  thea- 
tre is  ever  on  the  further  side  of  thirty-two;  it  must 
needs  envelop  itself  with  the  glamours  of  pretty  fib- 
beries  and  abstinence,  with  the  pinks  and  ambers  of 
wrinkle-hiding  stratagems.  Just  as  the  characters  to 
which  the  mind's  eye  gives  birth  in  the  still  of  the 
library  are,  after  all,  for  all  their  vividness,  but  half 
sensed,  half  seen,  so  should  the  players  of  the  stage 
sedulously  maintain  themselves  apart  from  the  public 
gaze  and  keep  themselves  ever  remote,  save  when  in 
the  direct  path  of  the  footlights,  from  the  curious 
and  illusion-rending  public  eye.  Juliet  and  Reisen- 
weber's,  D'Artagnan  and  a  Buick,  Little  Red  Riding 
Hood  and  Long  Beach  —  these  do  not  go  well  to- 
gether. For  the  Juliet  that  floats  on  the  smoke 
rings  that  curl  to  the  library  ceiling  isn't  somehow 
that  kind  of  Juliet,  and  the  D'Artagnan  isn't  that 
kind  of  D'Artagnan,  and  the  Little  Red  Riding 
Hood  isn't  that  kind  of  Little  Red  Riding  Hood. 
The  fair  creatures  of  fancy  do  not  wear  Zippo  Dress 
Shields;  the  heroes  of  the  reading  eye  somehow  or 
other  do  not  seem  to  be  the  kind  of  men  who  find 
that  Spearmint  Chewing  Gum  is  a  wonderful  aid  to 
digestion. 


Nothing  is  more  hypocritical  than  the  averment 
that  mere  beauty  should  be  held  as  of  no  substantial 
value  in  the  theatre.  We  demand  that  dramatic 
prose  be  beautiful;  that  scenic  investiture  be  beauti- 
ful; that  stage  lighting  be  beautiful;  that  the  theatre 

[107] 


THE  POPULAR    THEATRE 

auditorium  be  beautiful;  why  is  it  therefore  not  rea- 
sonable that  we  demand  beauty  as  well  in  the  play- 
ers? No  technical  art,  however  ably  developed  or 
whatever  the  altitude  of  its  stature,  can  provide  the 
necessary  and  vital  impulse  to  the  Cleopatra  of  Ber- 
nard Shaw's  fine  play  if  the  lady's  face  is  wrinkled, 
if  she  is  already  at  an  age  where  she  carries  an  um- 
brella on  rainy  days  and  eats  an  apple  every  night 
before  retiring.  An  artist  of  the  violin  may  have 
a  face  like  a  dollar  watch  and  a  figure  like  a  board- 
walk rolling-chair,  but  the  difference  between  him  and 
the  actor  is  that  he  merely  has  to  play  the  violin ;  he 
does  not  have  to  look  like  it. 

The  rotund  Miss  Rose  Coghlan  is  a  very  able 
actress,  an  actress  of  exceeding  technical  felicity,  yet 
all  of  Miss  Coghlan's  technical  skill  would  be  of  no 
avail  —  as  the  lady  herself  would  doubtless  be  the 
first  to  allow  —  in  the  absurdly  simple  role  of  Little 
Eva.  It  is  impossible  legitimately  to  get  away  from 
types  in  the  theatre.  And,  analogously  and  coinci- 
dentally,  it  is  impossible  on  many  occasions  to  get 
away  from  the  requirement  for  beauty.  Beauty 
probably  has  meant  more  and  has  done  more  for  the 
success  of  the  theatre  as  an  institution  than  has  tech- 
nical skill.  The  face  of  Mary  Anderson  drew  tens 
of  thousands  to  Shakespeare  —  and  so  assisted  in  the 
betterment  of  the  theatre  —  where  the  technical  art 
of  Nance  O'Neill  in  the  same  literature  availed  noth- 
ing. The  beauty  of  Julia  Marlowe  gave  birth  to 
tens  of  thousands  more  of  lovers  of  the  theater  than 
the  greater  technical  skill  of  Lena  Ashwell. 

Nor  am  I  here  seeking  to  oppose  the  box-office 

[108] 


ITS   IMAGINATION 

to  art.  The  art  of  the  theatre  may  only  be  en- 
couraged and  made  to  flourish  by  getting  the  mob 
into  the  theatre :  it  matters  not  how. .  If  necessary, 
fool  the  mob,  trick  the  mob  —  but  get  it  somehow 
into  the  playhouse.  Once  there,  one  may  do  many 
things  with  it  —  and  to  the  finer  estate  of  the  stage. 
Just  as  a  child  will  not  take  castor  oil,  which  will  do 
it  a  great  deal  of  good,  unless  its  wise  parents  mix 
it  with  some  exotic  philtre  and  so  pass  it  off  on  the  un- 
suspecting youngster  as  a  strawberry  phosphate  or  a 
Sauterne  cup  or  something  of  the  sort  —  just  so  will 
the  mob  not  take  Shakespeare  or  anything  else  which 
will  do  it  a  great  deal  of  good  unless  Shakespeare  is 
mixed  with  something  else  and  palmed  off  on  the 
mob  as  a  "  show."  But  once  Shakespeare,  or  any 
salutary  literary  tonic,  is  down,  the  mob  cannot  fail 
in  time  to  perceive  the  beneficial  results.  Maybe  not 
all  the  mob  —  that  were  altogether  too  much  to  hope 
for  —  but  at  least  a  portion  of  it.  And  so  I  repeat 
that  a  pretty  face  in  Shakespeare  will  do  more  for  the 
future  upbuilding  of  an  honourable  theatre  than  per- 
fect technique  with  a  squint  eye  and  a  Grand  Street 
nose. 

I  do  not,  of  course,  mean  to  argue  that  the  most 
vivid  memories  of  the  theatre  are  memories  of  such 
lovely  and  technically  deficient  creatures  of  the  yes- 
terdays as  that  stream  of  sunlight  that  fell  on  amber 
cut-glass  and  to  which  the  gods  gave  at  birth  the 
name  of  Sandol  Milliken,  or  that  silver  saucer  of 
marrons  and  cream  designated  all  too  prosaically  as 
Gladys  Wallis,  or  the  crystallized  pastels  with  eyes 
the  blue  of  overalls  that  the  theatre  knew  as  Vashti 


THE   POPULAR    THEATRE 

Earl  —  I  do  not,  as  I  say,  mean  to  argue  that  such 
as  these  linger  in  the  mind  longer  than  the  less  lovely 
and  vastly  more  skilled  Modjeskas  and  Janet 
Achurches  and  Clara  Morrises.  I  do  not  mean  to 
argue  that  this  is  the  case  for  the  simple  reason  that, 
melancholy  though  it  be,  the  matter  is  too  obvious  to 
need  arguing.  .  .  .  One  somehow  remembers  the 
little  blue  flowers  on  the  Saint  Cloud  road  more 
vividly  and  with  more  pleasure  than  the  great  Tomb 
of  Napoleon. 

I  should  like  to  pretend  that  beauty  does  not  prej- 
udice me  in  its  favor  —  I  appreciate  that  such  a  con- 
fession weaken's  one's  professional  standing  —  but 
I  find  I  am  less  successful  in  the  pretense  than  many 
of  my  colleagues.  Than  bald  perfection  nothing  is 
more  ugly.  Mere  perfect  technique  in  acting  leaves 
one  as  cold  as  mere  perfect  technique  in  writing.  In 
acting,  beauty  lends  that  to  technique  which  a  fine 
viewpoint  and  a  wayward  fancy  lend  to  writing:  the 
cocktail,  the  reflective  vista,  the  string  instruments. 
For  the  mob,  Bernhardt;  for  the  connoisseur,  Duse. 

The  manuscript  of  a  fine  play  is  literature.  When 
that  manuscript  is  taken  into  the  democratic  play- 
house it  is  taken  there,  plainly  enough,  for  purposes 
of  sale  to  the  greatest  number.  This  theatre  is  a 
shop  —  a  trade.  Why  not  honestly,  frankly,  regard 
it  as  such?  It  is  in  this  respect  analogous  to  a  popu- 
lar magazine.  A  popular  magazine  buys  a  first-rate 
piece  of  literature  from,  let  us  say,  Joseph  Conrad. 
It  realizes  that  it  can  not  possibly  sell  the  Conrad 
story  to  the  mob  in  sufficiently  large  numbers  on  its 
merits  as  a  first-rate  piece  of  literature.  So  it  in- 

[no] 


ITS   IMAGINATION 

dulges  in  the  customary  stratagem  of  surrounding  the 
Conrad  story  with  a  lot  of  photographs  of  Palm 
Beach,  ornate  actresses,  the  interior  of  C.  K.  G.  Bill- 
ings' new  house,  Alfred  Philippe  Roll's  paintings, 
Mrs.  Philip  Lydig  and  some  nude  sculpture  —  with, 
of  course,  a  lithograph  of  a  toothsome  cutie  by  Har- 
rison Fisher  on  the  magazine  cover.  Lured  thus  by 
pretty  pictures  of  pretty  things,  the  unsuspecting 
reader  is  drawn  into  the  Conrad  trap  and  so,  soon  or 
late,  in  all  probability  made  another  captive  by  first- 
rate  writing  instead  of  by  the  literature  of  Robert 
W.  Chambers  or  Elinor  Glyn. 

"  A  beautiful  face,"  wrote  Le  Bruyere,  "  is  of  all 
spectacles  the  most  beautiful."  "  The  moral  of  art 
—  beauty,"  observed  the  Goncourts.  "  A  beautiful 
woman's  head,"  said  Baudelaire,  "  is  one  which 
makes  one  dream,  in  a  confused  manner,  half  pleas- 
ure and  half  sadness."  And  Aubert:  "The  im- 
pression produced  on  man  by  beauty  is  made  of  sur- 
prise, admiration,  love,  sympathy,  desire  and,  gen- 
erally, joy."  Professor  Brander  Matthews  probably 
remembers  Yolande  Wallace  more  vividly  and  with 
considerably  greater  pleasure  than  Robert  Mantell's 
performance  in  "  The  Corsican  Brothers."  William 
Winter,  down  in  his  heart,  probably  retained  a  keener 
picture  of  Nina  Farrington  than  of  Eben  Plympton 
in  "  Rose  Michel."  But  neither  of  these  estimable 
savants  would  admit  it,  any  more  than  the  Thaw  jury 
would  admit  that  it  had  been  influenced  less  by  the 
learned  findings  of  Dr.  Allan  McLane  Hamilton 
than  by  Evelyn  Nesbit's  little  white  lace  baby-collar. 

I  write  here  what  I  write  because  I,  though  a  con- 

[in] 


THE   POPULAR    THEATRE 

siderably  younger  man  than  the  venerables  above 
mentioned,  am  (to  quite  a  degree)  just  as  much  a 
hypocrite  as  they  were  and  are.  For  the  sake  of  my 
professional  and  critical  standing,  I  frequently  pos- 
ture and  prevaricate  with  an  equally  high  gusto.  Not 
infrequently  I  profess  to  believe  that  a  very  pretty 
girl  is  not  so  good  an  actress  as  she  actually  is,  for  the 
simple  reason  that  I  appreciate  that  were  I  to  admit 
she  was  as  good  an  actress  as  she  actually  is,  nine  out 
of  every  ten  of  my  readers  would  protest  that  I  had, 
in  my  estimate  of  her,  been  hornswoggled  by  her 
mere  prettiness.  But  we  —  all  of  us  —  are  gentle- 
men afraid.  We  scowl  the  scowl  of  pundits  and 
babble  hypocrisies  and  frauds.  We  thrust  a  hand 
into  the  bosoms  of  our  Prince  Alberts,  strike  an  atti- 
tude like  a  statue  in  front  of  a  small  town  post-office 
and  mouth  the  fibs  of  flappers. 

A  great  play  is  a  great  play  before  it  is  acted, 
all  eloquent  bosh  to  the  contrary.  Try  to  think  of  a 
single  great  stage  play  that  is  not  at  the  same  time  a 
great  library  play.  The  notion  that  a  fine  reading 
drama  is  not  necessarily  a  fine  acting  drama  is  non- 
sense. Try  to  think  of  an  exception!  This  being 
true,  why  should  we  not,  when  such  a  play  is  lifted 
upon  the  stage,  be  privileged  beauty  in  the  playhouse 
where  the  call  is  for  such  beauty?  "  Les  Hanne- 
tons  "  is  a  satiric  comedy  of  the  first  water.  It  reads 
as  well  as  it  plays.  Its  heroine  is  supposed  to  be  an 
exceptionally  paradisaical  party.  Why  profess  to  be 
as  artistically  satisfied  with  Mrs.  Laurence  Irving  in 
the  part  as  with,  say,  Peggy  Rush?  The  finished 
technique  of  Mrs.  Irving  is,  from  the  soundest  criti- 
[112] 


ITS   IMAGINATION 

cal  viewpoint,  not  at  all  necessary  to  the  interpreta- 
tion of  the  role.  The  unfinished  technique,  the  mere 
ingenue  air  and  persuasive  face,  of  the  little  Rush 
girl  would  bring  to  the  role  precisely  what  it  requires. 
The  belief  that  finished  technique  is  to  be  admired  in 
every  acting  role,  regardless  of  the  intrinsic  nature 
of  that  role,  is  as  incongruous  as  would  be  a  belief 
that  a  great  and  versatile  actress  like  Sarah  Bern- 
hardt  could  give  a  better  performance  of  "  Peg  o' 
My  Heart "  than  a  more  appetizing  but  immeasur- 
ably less  talented  actress  like  Laurette  Taylor. 


PROPERTY  OF 
DEPARTMENT  OF  DRAMATIC  ART 

Chapter  Nine:  Its  Comedians 

Gone  with  the  day  of  musical  comedy  drinking 
songs  the  refrain  whereof  was  sung  to  the  accompani- 
ment of  bells  secreted  in  the  chorus'  glasses,  is  gone 
the  day  of  the  musical  comedy  comedian  whose 
comedic  talent  rested  chiefly  in  a  large  putty  nose 
periodically  illuminated  by  a  small  red  electric  bulb. 
Twenty  years  and  more  have  since  flowed  under  the 
bridge  of  that  nose,  and  these  years  have  witnessed 
the  birth  of  a  new  comique  academy,  an  academy 
whose  humour  no  longer  consists  entirely  in  sitting 
in  a  snug  arm-chair  which  remains  fastened  to  the 
comique's  netherlands  when  he  arises,  nor  in  a 
voluminous  pair  of  trousers  hitched  up  under  the 
chin  with  a  large  button  on  which  is  painted  a  white 
daisy. 

Where,  in  that  ancient  day,  any  actor  was  re- 
garded as  a  great  comedian  if  only  he  had  funny  legs 
and  ears  over  which  he  enjoyed  muscular  control, 
the  pantaloon  who  in  this  more  sophisticated  era 
would  woo  the  remunerative  chuckle  must  be  a  fellow 
of  somewhat  more  subtle  stratagems  and  didoes. 
No  longer,  as  in  olden  days,  will  an  audience  go  into 
wild  hysterics  at  the  mere  sight  of  a  comedian  walk- 
ing out  upon  the  stage  wearing  a  wicker  waste-paper 
basket  for  a  hat,  and  with  one  shoe  six  sizes  larger 


ITS'  COMEDIANS 

than  the  other.  That  glad  epoch  is  now  but  a  mem- 
ory —  the  epoch  of  Thomas  Q.  Seabrooke  and 
Arthur  Dunn,  of  Francis  Wilson  and  Frank  Daniels, 
of  De  Wolf  Hopper  and  Jimmie  Powers,  of  Frank 
Moulan  and  Harry  Bulger,  of  Jeff  De  Angelis,  Sam 
Bernard,  Jerome  Sykes,  Charlie  Bigelow,  D.  L.  Don, 
James  Sullivan,  Pete  Dailey,  Eddie  Foy,  Johnny  Ray, 
Fred  Frear,  Harry  Kelly,  John  T.  Kelly  —  the  epoch 
of  "  The  Oolah,"  "  Fleur-de-Lys,"  "  A  Dangerous 
Maid,"  "The  Grand  Vizier,"  "The  Little 
Trooper,"  "The  Begum,"  "The  Little  Host," 
"The  Ameer,"  "The  Idol's  Eye,"  "  Tobasco," 
"  The  Merry  Monarch,"  "  Wang,"  and  "  A  Run- 
away Girl."  Hopper  falling  down  the  collapsible 
stairway  in  "  Panjandrum  " ;  Daniels  working  his  eye- 
brows in  "  The  Wizard  of  the  Nile  ";  Pete  Dailey 
stroking  his  fur  overcoat  in  "  A  Straight  Tip  "  while 
a  stagehand  in  the  wings  close  by  emitted  cat  mews; 
Francis  Wilson  getting  mixed  up  with  the  suit  of 
armour  in  "Erminie";  Jimmie  Powers  pretending 
he  couldn't  move  his  right  leg  from  a  certain  spot 
and  giving  his  knee  extravagant  wiggles  in  "  The 
Messenger  Boy " —  they've  all  passed  into  the 
pigeon-holes,  relics  of  a  period  when  the  musical 
comedy  comedian  was  a  comedian  mostly  in  terms 
of  a  comic  wig,  a  grotesque  costume  and  a  grand 
inaugural  entrance  effected  by  swinging  a  balloon 
across  the  backdrop  with  himself  dangling  therefrom, 
the  seat  of  his  trousers  caught  by  the  anchor. 

The  comedian  of  the  present  day  may  no  longer 
content  himself  with  so  nai've  a  hocus-pocus.  It  no 
longer  suffices  that  he  merely  engage  as  foil  a  mime 


THE   POPULAR    THEATRE 

half  so  tall  as  himself  who  shall,  when  the  comedian 
seeks  to  locate  him,  sneak  between  the  comedian's 
extended  legs.  Nor  does  it  longer  suffice  that  he 
merely  don  a  wig  the  tuft  of  hair  on  the  top  of  which 
responds  sympathetically  to  a  string  concealed  in  his 
pocket.  In  the  stead  of  such  erstwhile  guffaw  brew- 
eries, the  comedian  of  the  present  day,  the  comedian 
like  Jolson  or  Hitchcock  or  George  Bickel,  must  sub- 
stitute a  genuine  sense  of  comic  values  and  not  a  little 
acting  ability.  This  newer  school  of  harlequin  must 
make  the  audience  laugh  without  the  aid  of  false 
cardboard  ears,  without  the  aid  of  a  cow  bell  in  the 
hands  of  the  trap-drummer,  without  the  help  of  such 
elaborate  scenic  stratagems  as  were  vouchsafed  the 
leading  jackpuddings  in  the  days  of  David  Hender- 
son and  Rudolph  Aronson. 

It  was  probably  not  so  difficult  to  be  a  comedian 
in  those  days.  The  loudest  laugh  Pete  Dailey  ever 
evoked  might  doubtless  have  been  evoked  by  any 
layman  in  his  audience,  for  this  horse-laugh  was 
begot  not  of  Dailey's  own  effort  but  of  the  manoeu- 
vers  of  the  unknown  and  unsung  stage-hand  whose 
job  it  nightly  was  —  when  the  express  train  was  ex- 
pected imminently  to  thunder  out  over  the  trestle  in 
"  A  Straight  Tip,"  with  Dailey  meanwhile  frantically 
trying  to  flag  it  —  to  shove  out  a  sailboat.  Thus, 
too,  the  loudest  laugh  that  Francis  Wilson  evoked  in 
all  his  long  career  came  not  from  his  own  direct 
efforts,  but  from  some  stage-hand  who,  when  Wil- 
son (doomed,  in  "The  Monks  of  Malabar,"  to 
die  at  the  stroke  of  twelve)  began  counting  the 
ominous  strokes  of  the  clock's  bell  and  had  counted 

E"6] 


ITS   COMEDIANS 

up  to  twelve  —  then  made  the  thing  strike  thirteen. 

Of  course,  there  were  comedians  in  those  days,  fel- 
lows like  Dan  Daly,  who  were  ahead  of  their  time, 
whose  humour  was  spontaneous  and  whose  methods 
were  more  after  the  current,  and  less  artless,  .fashion. 
But  in  the  bulk  these  posture-masters  and  pickle-her- 
rings were  a  primitive  lot,  merry  Andrews  whose 
cardinal  ideas  of  comedy  were  ( i )  an  extravagant 
vibration  of  the  knees  and  hands  and  noisy  chattering 
of  the  teeth  to  indicate  fear,  (2)  a  device  which 
caused  a  small  green  toy  balloon  to  sprout  from  the 
comique's  head  when  the  latter  was  struck  by  the 
Prime  Minister,  (3)  a  piece  of  black  cosmetic 
smeared  on  the  lower  front  teeth,  (4)  a  throne  that 
would  collapse  when  grandly  sat  upon,  ( 5 )  a  paint- 
ing of  an  ancestor,  hung  in  the  Manor  House,  which 
would  wink  at  the  comique  after  he  had  imbibed  a 
stoop  of  liquor  and  lead  him,  trembling,  to  place  a 
whole  pitcher  of  icewater  upside  down  upon  his  head, 
thus  causing  a  piece  of  ice  to  slide  down  his  back, 
which  piece  of  ice  would  resist  his  extravagant  efforts 
to  locate  it,  and  (6)  a  tree  painted  on  the  scenery 
against  which  the  comique  might  make  to  lean  for 
support,  a  proceeding  which  would  infallibly  project 
the  comique,  and  somewhat  violently,  upon  his  Little 
Jumbo. 

That  some  of  these  masterpieces  of  ancient 
comedic  histrionism  were  of  jocund  countenance,  I 
do  not  presume  to  deny.  The  point  is  rather  that 
their  sponsors  were  comedians,  not  like  the  better 
comedians  of  today,  in  the  intrinsic  sense,  but  in  the 
extrinsic.  Where  a  present-day  bel  esprit  like 

[i  17] 


THE   POPULAR    THEATRE 

Hitchcock,  for  example,  is  successful  in  making  an 
audience  laugh  without  the  aid  of  make-up,  the  stage 
carpenter  and  a  loaded  cigar  —  in  his  more  or  less 
simple  street  clothes,  so  to  speak  —  the  comedian  of 
yesterday  was  in  the  main  unsuccessful  unless  he 
resorted  to  such  spurious  auxiliaries  as  the  stuffing 
of  big  lumps  of  cotton  into  his  tights  to  make  his 
legs  look  like  the  legs  of  a  gnarled  and  knobby  rustic 
chair. 

The  comedian  of  today  relies  largely  on  the  lines 
the  librettist  provides  him,  and  employs,  very  often, 
a  real  histrionic  skill  and  a  practised  voice  inflexion 
to  point  them,  to  invest  them  with  comic  air,  to  draw 
out  of  them  the  last  possible  ounce  of  chuckle  juice 
that  they  contain.  The  comedian  of  yesterday  very 
often  offered  a  performance  that  was  one-tenth 
librettist  to  nine-tenths  comedian,  a  performance 
which  year  in  and  year  out  was  largely  the  same. 
This  ancient  scaramouch  was  wont  to  repeat  one 
year  a  soufflee  of  all  the  tricks,  grunts,  mannerisms, 
postures  and  wheezes  that  had  found  favour  with  his 
audience  the  year  before  and  the  year  before  that 
and  the  decade  or  so  before  that.  And  the  result 
was  less  a  comedian  appearing  successively  in  differ- 
ent musical  comedies  than  different  musical  comedies 
appearing  successively  in  a  comedian. 

Thus,  to  take,  for  example,  De  Wolf  Hopper,  one 
was  certain  when  one  went  to  see  "  Wang  "  or 
"  Panjandrum  "  or  "  Happyland  "  or  "  El  Capitan  " 
or  "  The  Charlatan  "  or  "  Dr.  Syntax  "  or  any  other 
musical  comedy  in  which  Mr.  Hopper  was  starring 
that,  whatever  the  nature  of  the  libretto,  Mr.  Hopper 

[118] 


ITS   COMEDIANS 

would  offer  again  his  entire  bag  of  tricks  containing 
among  other  things  (i)  the  picking  of  a  carrot  and 
some  cherries  off  the  hat  of  one  of  the  women  char- 
acters and  the  eating  of  them,  (2)  the  elaborate 
preparation  for  a  stupendous  sneeze  with  the  ulti- 
mate discharge  of  a  diminutive  sniffle,  (3)  the  run- 
ning of  the  scale  with  the  voice,  ending  with  a  basso 
profundo  rumble,  (4)  the  burlesque  classic  dancing 
with  the  right  hand  held  airily  aloft  and  the  left  hand 
reaching  swan-like  to  the  rear,  (5)  the  pit-a-pat  little 
steps  in  imitation  of  the  walk  of  a  child,  and  the 
various  equally  familiar  sister  stratagems.  Again, 
thus  to  take,  for  example,  Jeff  De  Angelis,  one  might 
always  expect  to  see,  whatever  the  play  in  which  the 
comedian  was  appearing,  the  familiar  bundle  of 
dodges  beginning  with  the  intricate  tangling  up  of 
the  legs  during  the  flirtation  with  the  leading  lady 
and  ending  with  the  kissing  of  the  entire  chorus. 

The  buffoons  of  the  yesterday  were  strangely 
stereotyped.  Where,  today,  a  comedian  like  Fred 
Stone  labours  ceaselessly  to  vary  and  to  improve 
his  performances  —  even  beyond  the  variations 
vouchsafed  him  by  his  librettist  —  the  comedian  of 
the  day  of  Benjamin  Harrison  and  Grover  Cleveland 
rested  content  year  after  year  to  repeat  himself  — 
and  the  himself  he  so  repeated  was  more  often  than 
not  a  mere  amalgam  of  the  obvious  antics  of  a  circus 
clown.  This  saltimbanco  had  small  feeling  for  wit, 
small  talent  or  capacity  for  genuine  burlesque.  In 
the  last  four  years,  W.  C.  Fields,  the  comedian  of  the 
Ziegfeld  "  Follies,"  has  devised  more  authentic,  more 
novel  and  more  amusing  burlesque  drolleries  than 


such  comedians  as  Arthur  Dunn  and  Seabrooke  and 
Charlie  Bigelow  and  Jimmie  Powers,  all  taken  to- 
gether, were  able  to  negotiate  in  their  entire  footlight 
career. 

When  one  recalls  that  the  librettos  provided  the 
comedians  of  the  yesterdays  were  four  times  in  five 
of  a  humorous  quality  far  surpassing  the  librettos 
provided  the  comedians  of  the  modern  day,  the  short- 
comings of  these  bygone  zanies  become  even  the  more 
vividly  manifest.  Unable  often  to  get  out  of  the 
comic  libretto  lines  their  full  value,  they  were  wont 
to  resort  to  a  concealment  of  this  comedic  and  his- 
trionic deficiency  in  costumery  and  wiggery  the  like 
of  which  was  never  seen  on  land  or  sea  and  in  various 
elaborate  mechanical  expedients  operated  on  their 
behalf  by  the  stage-carpenter  and  his  corps  of  as- 
sistants. In  that  era,  for  one  Dan  Daly  who  could 
make  an  audience  laugh  without  making  himself  up 
to  look  like  a  retreat  of  the  Russian  army,  there 
were  a  dozen  who  could  not  face  an  audience  unless 
outfitted  with  a  pair  of  green  and  yellow  bloomers, 
a  pink  wig,  an  enormous  scimitar  and  a  mouth  em- 
bellished on  either  side  with  sufficient  rouge  to  make 
it  look  a  foot  wide.  For  one  Harry  Watson 
or  George  Bickel  who  today  can  make  an  audience 
laugh  by  a  mere  gesture,  a  mere  roll  of  the  eye,  a 
mere  twist  of  the  features,  there  used  to  be  two  dozen 
who,  to  achieve  a  laugh  of  even  one-half  the  propor- 
tion, were  forced  to  resort  to  a  costume  that  looked 
like  the  window  of  Schwartz's  toy  store  the  day  be- 
fore Christmas,  and  then,  in  that  costume,  turn  a 
somersault  and  fall  down  a  long  flight  of  stairs, 
[120] 


ITS    COMEDIANS 

The  comedian  of  our  American  musical  comedy 
has  indeed  improved  with  the  passing  of  the  years. 
Each  season  there  is  less  and  less  in  him  of  the  clown 
of  the  sawdust  ring,  and  more  and  more  of  the  clever 
farceur,  the  droll  wag,  the  inventive  and  even  imag- 
inative fellow.  He  is  carrying  forward  the  best 
traditions  of  the  ambassadors  to  Folly,  the  traditions 
of  such  as  Ward  and  Vokes,  and  Weber  and  Fields, 
and  the  little  Rogers  brother  who  is  dead.  He  has 
forgotten  —  dismissed  entirely  —  the  obsolete,  la- 
borious and  never-funny  propaganda  of  the  school 
of  comique  whose  creed  was  a  handkerchief  contain- 
ing a  wet  sponge  and  a  large  orange  rosette  sewed  to 
the  seat  of  the  trousers. 


[121] 


Chapter  Ten:  Its  Motion  Pictures 

For  all  the  dumfounding  magnificences  of  its  press- 
agents'  rhetoric,  the  motion  picture,  in  this  bloomy 
day  of  its  history,  exhibits  still  nothing  that  visibly 
lifts  it  above  the  artistic  and  aesthetic  level  of  Chi- 
nese cooking  or  a  German  ballet.  Though  its 
mechanism  has  indicated  various  degrees  of  im- 
provement, though  it  has  occasionally  brought  to 
itself  some  of  the  work  of  men  of  first-rate  endeavour 
in  the  field  of  literature,  though  it  has  traveled  to  the 
ends  of  the  earth  in  successful  search  of  lovely  and 
appropriate  backgrounds,  and  though  in  the  general 
enterprise  it  has  liberally  expended  millions  of  dol- 
lars, it  remains  yet  precisely  what  it  was  in  its  in- 
fancy: a  mere  ingenious  mechanical  toy  for  children. 

It  would  seem  to  be  the  fashion  to  lay  the  blame 
for  this  status  quo,  this  monotonous  left-right  left- 
right,  of  the  cinema  on  the  general  illiteracy  and 
cheapness  of  its  impresarios.  But  while  these  quali- 
ties are  to  be  denied  the  latter  not  even  by  their  most 
friendly  biographers,  these  same  qualities  have  actu- 
ally very  little  to  do,  whether  the  one  way  or  the 
other,  with  the  motion  picture's  arrested  develop- 
ment. Education,  cultural  experience  and  breeding 
are  intrinsically  no  more  essential  to  the  manufacture 
of  the  motion  picture,  good  or  bad,  than  to  the  manu- 
[122] 


ITS  MOTION  PICTURES 

facture  of  pink  chemises  or  vaudeville  acts.  These 
attributes  are,  in  truth,  a  handicap.  And  the  belief 
of  certain  persons  that  the  motion  picture  might  be 
made  a  finer  and  more  beautiful  thing,  and  something 
approaching  to  an  art,  did  its  governors  have  college 
degrees  and  social  background  is  akin  to  the  belief 
that  Professor  William  Lyon  Phelps  and  Mrs.  Her- 
man Oelrichs  might  make  an  art  out  of  the  view  of 
an  actor  staring  pop-eyed  at  the  camera  and  thus 
registering  alarm  where  the  current  Mosie  Cohens 
and  Isadore  Rosenbergs  succeed  only  in  making  a 
view  of  an  actor  staring  pop-eyed  at  the  camera  and 
thus  registering  alarm. 

The  motion  picture  calls  for  culture  and  taste  no 
more  than  the  making  of  such  mechanical  playthings 
as  walking  bears  and  grunting  dolls  calls  for  these 
qualities,  and  for  the  same  reason.  The  motion  pic- 
ture's appeal,  by  reason  of  the  subjective  nature  of 
the  motion  picture  as  a  form  of  diversion,  is  plainly 
enough  not  to  the  lover  of  music  or  of  literature  or 
of  painting,  or  of  any  of  the  seven  arts,  but  to  the 
long-eared  kind  of  person  for  whom  P.  T.  Barnum 
devised  the  side-show:  the  person  intrigued  by  an 
object  in  proportion  as  that  object  departs  from  the 
beauty  of  its  type.  That  is,  the  kind  of  person  who 
is  curiously  enchanted  by  the  spectacle  of  abnormal 
twins,  an  immensely  fat  female,  an  excessively  cadav- 
erous male,  a  grotesquely  tall  Welshman,  a  woman 
with  a  beard,  a  dog-faced  boy,  a  three-legged  cow 
or  some  Bosco  made  up  to  look  like  the  inside  of  a 
horse-hair  sofa  and  nibbling  at  bananas  polka-dotted 
to  look  like  rattlesnakes.  This,  today,  the  typical 

[123] 


THE  POPULAR    THEATRE 

patron.of  the  motion  picture.  This,  the  person  who 
thrills  to  sensationalized  ugliness,  to  ingenuous 
sleight-of-hand,  to  literature  with  the  mumps,  to 
Rome  in  the  days  of  its  Los  Angeles  splendour  and 
Athens  at  the  zenith  of  its  Fort  Lee  glory.  This, 
the  person  to  whom  drama  is  impressive  in  the  degree 
that  it  divorces  life,  fancy  in  the  degree  that  its 
nymphs  and  fairies  divorce  diapers,  and  beauty  in 
the  degree  that  it  divorces  almost  everything  save 
the  grounds  of  Mr.  George  Gould's  Lakewood 
home,  a  high  waterfall,  or  a  view  of  the  Grand 
Canyon  with  Douglas  Fairbanks  standing  close  to 
the  edge  on  one  foot. 

But  these  departures  of  the  motion  picture  from 
the  pink  of  perfection  are  to  be  held  critically  against 
the  motion  picture  no  more  than  similar  departures 
are  to  be  held  against  a  Montmartre  Punch  and  Judy 
show.  For  serious  criticism  of  the  motion  picture 
from  the  level  of  its  press-agents'  hysterias  were  as- 
suredly as  droll  a  tactic  as  bringing  in  James  Huneker 
to  pass  judgment  on  Anna  Held  taking  a  milk  l^ath. 
The  only  sound  and  fair  critical  attitude  towardthe 
motion  picture  is  the  critical  attitude  assumed  gen- 
erally toward  such  analogous  art  forms  -as  fhe  col- 
oured picture  postcards  of  famous  cathedrals  with 
the  windows  covered  with  small  pieces  of  isinglass,  as 
the  mailing  cards  containing  such  legends  as  "  Don't 
spit  on  the  floor;  remember  the  Johnstown  Flood  I  ", 
and  as  the  Central  Park  species  of  Greek  dancing 
and  the  kind  of  drama  in  which  the  identity  of  the 
principal  character  is  eventually  established  throiSgh 
tfre  whereabouts  of  a  mole.  And  it  is  for  this  rea- 
{124] 


ITS  MOTION  PICTURES 

son  that  what  share  of  merit  may  properly  be  credited 
to  the  motion  picture  may  be  credited  alone  to  that 
type  of  motion  picture  which  candidly  recognizes  the 
drollery  of  any  other  cinema  principle  or  critical  atti- 
tude, that  is  to  say,  the  motion  picture  which  sensibly 
throws  aside  all  pose  and  affectation  and  substitutes 
an  intentionally  comic  story  for  the  promiscuous  un- 
intentionally comic  one,  and  so  relevantly  exchanges 
a  slice  of  soft  pie  for  Mr.  Wallace  Reid's  celebrated 
impersonation  of  the  desperado  of  the  plains  with  his 
every  eyelash  carefully  beaded  and  the  Weber  and 
Heilbroner  tag  showing  plainly  at  every  blow  of  the 
wind  on  the  bottom  of  his  new  Georgette  crepe  neck- 
tie. 

Not  the  swollen  opera  of  such  motion  picture  mes- 
siahs  as  D.  W.  Griffith,  but  the  simple  slapstick  pic- 
tures of  such  as  Chaplin,  represent  the  screen  at  its 
most  apposite  and  best.  The  performance  in  the 
films  of  stfme  such  drama  as  Shakespeare's  "  Romeo 
and  Juliet "  is  doomed  by  virtue  of  the  screen's  in- 
evitable pantomime  to  amount  in  effect  to  little  more 
than  the  playing  of  Gounod's  "  Romeo  et  Juliette  " 
on  a  silent  piano.  But  this  pantomime  that  here 
deletes  the  presentation  of  its  opulent  poetry,  and  so 
make-s  the  whole  proceeding  as  ridiculous  as  a  dumb 
Span  attempting  to  convey  the  beauties  of  Swinburne 
by  making  faces,  takes  nothing  from  the  motion  pic- 
ture slapstick  comedy.  The  very  shortcomings  of 
the  cinema  turn  virtues  in  this  latter.  For  where  the 
spoken  word  is  'absolutely  essential  to  the  intelligent 
projection  of  any  respectable  drama  not  originally  de- 
signed as  a  pantomime,  it  is'  as  unnecessary  to  broad 


> 


THE   POPULAR    THEATRE 

low  comedy  as  it  is  to  the  exposition  of  a  fine  paint- 
ing or  a  beautiful  piece  of  sculpture.  Falstaff  in  the 
clothes-hamper  and  Toby  at  the  pots  are  just  as 
comic,  and  just  as  Shakespearean,  on  the  screen  as 
in  the  theatre  or  library.  But  the  Othellos  and 
Violas  once  they  get  onto  the  screen  are  no  more  the 
Othellos  and  Violas  of  Shakespeare  than  a  photo- 
graph of  Corot's  "  Pastorale  "  is  the  "  Pastorale  " 
of  Corot. 

Further,  contrary  to  the  general  claim  that  the 
motion  picture  offers  a  vastly  greater  vista  to  the 
imagination  than  the  stage,  the  truth  is  that  it  actu- 
ally offers  a  vista  immeasurably  less  great.  Where 
the  stage  seeks  merely  to  sprinkle  water  on  the  fertile 
imagination  and  let  it  flower  gracefully  to  its  own  ful- 
ness, the  screen  drags  out  not  only  the  sprinkling-can, 
but  the  shovel,  rake,  clippers,  flowers,  flower  pots 
and  fancy  ribbons  to  boot.  It  describes  nothing, 
suggests  nothing,  paints  never  a  metaphor :  it  shows 
everything,  skin,  flesh  and  liver.  If  a  country  lad 
halts  his  plough  to  dream  wistfully  of  the  world  be- 
yond the  hills,  is  the  director  content  that  the  lad's 
dream  be  the  nebulous  dream  that  has  crossed  the 
eyes  of  a  hundred  thousand  lads  before  him?  Not 
if  the  director  can  help  itl  And  so  the  lad's  dream 
becomes  a  rapid  sequence  of  fade-ins  and  fade-outs 
showing  views  of  the  Singer  Building,  the  Forty- 
second  street  Subway  station  at  the  rush  hour,  the 
facade  of  Churchill's  restaurant,  and  the  lad  in  bank 
president  whiskers  and  a  Prince  Albert  seated  in  a 
mahogany  office  counting  one  hundred  dollar  bills. 
Does  a  little  orphan  child  wonder  what  Heaven  is 


ITS   MOTION  PICTURES 

like  and,  presto  I  —  in  the  upper  left  hand  corner  of 
the  screen  appears  some  vacant  New  Jersey  cow 
pasture  full  of  extra  girls  in  transparent  white  cheese- 
cloth dancing  around  an  actor  dressed  up  like  James 
O'Neill,  seated  on  a  big  red  plush  chair  and  repre- 
senting God.  Or  does  a  character  observe  that  his 
wrath  is  like  unto  the  angry  sea  and  —  flash !  —  we 
are  promptly  given  a  view  of  the  Atlantic  Ocean. 

Thus  do  the  very  scope  of  the  motion  picture  and 
the  irresistible  temptations  of  that  scope  defeat  the 
motion  picture.  Just  as  it  is  difficult  to  refrain  from 
eating  salted  almonds  once  they  are  placed  before 
one  and  once  one  has  started,  so  is  it  difficult  for  the 
motion  picture  entrepreneurs  to  resist  the  flexibility 
of  their  medium.  And  it  is  because  this  flexibility 
works  not,  as  the  gradually  increased  flexibility  of  the 
dramatic  stage  has  worked,  for  the  better,  but  for 
the  worse,  that  the  motion  picture  is  the  obscene  and 
melancholy  gimcrack  it  is. 


That  the  motion  picture  might  very  easily  be  made 
better  than  it  is,  is  of  course  perfectly  obvious.1     But 

1  The  twenty  leading  axioms  of  the  motion  picture  dramaturgy  are 
as  follows: 

1.  No  country  girl  ever  wears  shoes  or  stockings. 

2.  All  love-making  at  the  seashore  takes  place  on  top  of  a  rock  close 
to  the  water's  edge. 

3.  Through  the  windows  of  every  business  office  in  New  York,  one 
can  see  the  Singer  Building. 

4.  Wall  Street  men  always  receive  news  that  they  have  lost  their 
fortunes  while  their  wives  are  giving  balls. 

5.  All  young  girls  have  animal  pets. 

[127] 


THE  POPULAR    THEATRE 

that  this  betterment  would  fail  to  bring  the  motion 
picture  even  one-six  hundredth  of  a  peg  up  the  ladder 
of  even  a  pseudo-art  is  of  course  equally  obvious. 
The  motion  picture  is  the  result  of  a  circumspect 
elimination  of  the  principal  attributes  of  four  of  the 
arts  and  a  clever  synthesis  of  the  scum:  it  has  re- 

6.  All  men  who  have  mistresses  present  the  latter  with  expensive 
pearl  necklaces. 

7.  No  man  ever  appears  in  his  club  save  in  evening  clothes. 

8.  No  blonde  is  ever  wicked. 

9.  All  foreign  gentlemen  wear  Inverness  coats. 

10.  All  men,  who,  before  their  marriage,  have  led  dissolute  lives 
soon  or  late  discover  that  their  son's  fiancee  is  their  own  il- 
legitimate daughter. 

11.  In  all  card  games,  some  one  cheats. 

12.  An  artist,  going  into  the  country  to  paint,  always  falls  in  love 
with  a  country  maiden  and,  subsequently  finding  that  his  city 
fiancee  has  been  false  to  him,  marries  the  country  maiden,  the 

country  maiden's  brother  in  the  third  reel  always  suspecting  the 
motives  of  the  artist  and  being  prevented  from  striking  him  by 
the  country  maiden. 

13.  All  women  powdering  their  faces  before  boudoir  mirrors  sud- 
denly behold  in  the  mirrors,  to  their  wide-eyed  horror,  the  vil- 
lain entering  the  room. 

14.  In  all  fights  in  Western  dance  halls,  the  lamp  is  broken. 

15.  All  evil  plots  in  Russia  are  hatched  by  the  Grand  Duke  Boris 
(assisted  by  an  adventuress  named  Olga)   and  are  ultimately 
set  at  naught  by  an  artist  named  Serge. 

1 6.  All  hallways  contain  grandfathers'  clocks. 

17.  The  German  army,  upon  invading  America,  will  make  a  bee- 
line  for  the  home  of  some  young  blonde  and  concentrate  its  ef- 
forts in  preventing  the  young  blonde's  fiance  from  interfering 
while  one  of  its  sergeants  imprints  a  kiss  upon  the  mouth  of  the 
frantic  and  struggling  maiden. 

1 8.  //  is  customary  for  all  college  students,  whatever  their  alma 
mater,  to  have  a  "Yale  flag  on  the  wall  of  their  studies.     This  is 
especially  true  in  the  case  of  students  at  Harvard. 

19.  The  only  periodical  ever  to  be  found  on  the  library  tables  in 
fashionable  English  country  houses  is  the  "  Photoplay  Magazine." 

20.  All  river  boats  burn,  and  all  yachts  sink. 

[128] 


ITS  MOTION  PICTURES 

moved  style  from  literature,  speech  from  drama, 
colour  from  painting,  form  and  the  third  dimension 
from  sculpture.  Its  relation  to  callaesthetics  is  the 
relation  of  chiropody  to  surgery.  Its  relation  to  the 
art  of  the  theatre  is  akin  to  that  of  some  suavely  ex- 
ploited lady  of  joy. 

I  except,  as  I  have  said,  the  frankly  comical  mo- 
tion picture,  for  this  type  of  picture,  when  it  is  well 
done  —  and  it  is  sometimes  extremely  well  done  — 
is  in  its  way  a  perfectly  sound  and  estimable  work, 
adroitly  conceived,  well  written,  well  acted  and  ably 
projected.  Appropriately  "  broad  as  ten  thousand 
beeves  at  pasture,"  it  depicts  the  low  comedy  of 
human  nature  from  as  much  the  viewpoint  of 
Rabelais  and  Shakespeare,  Swift  and  Balzac  and 
Smollett  and  Fielding,  as  the  law  allows.  The  best 
writing  that  is  being  done  for  the  motion  pictures  to- 
day —  indeed  the  only  writing  worthy  of  the  name 
—  is  the  writing  being  done  for  these  honestly  and 
legitimately  vulgar  studies.  Such  so-called  comics 
as  "  The  Plumber,"  "  The  Submarine  Pilot,"  "  A 
Dog's  Life  "  and  the  like  are  excellent  things  of  their 
sort.  They  show  imagination,  a  sharp  eye  to  au- 
thentic comic  values,  a  sharp  sense  of  the  funda- 
mentals of  certain  phases  of  human  nature;  and,  as 
broad  vulgar  low  comedy,  they  are  indeed  not  only 
tremendously  superior  at  almost  every  point  to  much 
of  the  vulgar  low  comedy  of  such  as  Shakespeare, 
but  to  the  bulk  of  the  low  comedy  of  the  modern 
dramatic  theatre. 

But  when  we  turn  from  this  class  of  motion  pic- 
ture to  the  so-called  feature  pictures,  we  descend  co- 

[129] 


THE   POPULAR    THEATRE 

incidentally  from  the  honourably  ridiculous  to  the 
sublimely  imbecile.  Nine  times  in  ten  the  joint  prod- 
uct of  the  efforts  of  some  wretched  scenario  hack, 
some  quondam  tank-show  stage  director  and  some 
erstwhile  pretty  male  counter-jumper  or  pantry 
sweetie,  these  pictures  may  no  more  be  endured  by  a 
person  civilized  to  the  point  of  an  occasional  hair 
wash  than  the  barroom  slot  melodeons  that  simul- 
taneously render  Balfe  and  one's  weight.1  Of  un- 
witting ignorance,  illiteracy,  and  stupidity  all  com- 
pact, they  serve  as  overpowering  propaganda  for  the 
further  debasing  of  our  native  theatrical  audiences' 
taste,  and  as  a  means  of  graduation  to  the  dramatic 
stage  of  an  increasingly  ample  corps  of  cheap  melo- 
drama and  sweet  slop  writers,  absurdly  incompetent 
stage  producers  and  bad  actors.  It  is  this  school  of 

1  The  widely  held  opinion  that  the  motion  pictures  are  the  fatuous 
things  they  are  primarily  because  their  stories  are  composed  by  ill- 
paid,  talentless  hacks,  is,  however,  absurd.  Joseph  Conrad's 
"Lord  Jim  "  or  "Heart  of  Darkness,"  made  into  a  motion  picture  by 
Conrad  himself,  would  prove  on  the  screen  as  sorry  stuff  as  the 
opera  of  any  of  the  current  hack  scenario  gentlemen.  One  can't 
play  Hauptmann's  "  Hannele  "  in  a  tent  nor  Brahms'  violin  concerto 
on  an  oboe.  One  can't  sense  the  spell  of  Salzburg  through  the  win- 
dows of  the  Orient  Express.  The  real  trouble  with  the  motion  pic- 
tures lies  not  in  their  stories,  but  in  the  persons  who  produce  those 
stories.  These  misguided  persons  imagine  it  to  be  the  duty  of  their 
trade  to  elevate  the  motion  pictures,  to  make  of  them  a  something 
better  than  they  are  and  should  be,  when  in  point  of  fact  they  occupy 
in  the  amusement  world  the  same  position  as  dime  novels,  vaude- 
ville shows,  cabaret  music,  billiards  and  the  free  lunch.  For  such 
divertissements  there  is  an  ample,  appropriate  and  remunerative  pub- 
lic. Why,  therefore,  posture  the  motion  pictures  against  the  legiti- 
mate stage  or  the  library?  It  is  not  essential  to  a  bank's  success  that 
its  teller  be  able  to  impart  information  on  Xenophanes,  Tschaikowsky 
and  the  spirochate  pallida. 


ITS  MOTION  PICTURES 

motion  picture  that  buys  a  meritorious  play  like 
'  The  Poor  Little  Rich  Girl,"  pays  many  thousands 
of  dollars  for  it,  spends  many  thousands  of  dollars 
on  scenery  and  fixings  and  many  thousands  more  on 
advertising,  and  then  hires  a  fifty  dollar  a  week  ex- 
dime  novel  writer  to  improve  it  by  sticking  in  a  pro- 
logue in  which  the  little  heroine,  supposed  in  the 
theme  of  the  play  to  be  burdened  with  a  lonely  and 
tearful  existence,  is  shown  having  a  high  and  gay  time 
and  laughing  herself  half  to  death  with  the  compan- 
ionable neighbours'  children.  It  is  this  kind  of  pic- 
ture that  shows  Mr.  Fairbanks,  in  the  proud  opus 
night  "A  Modern  Musketeer,"  entering  —  so  goes 
the  reading  matter  on  the  screen  — "  his  gentlemen's 
club  ";  that  shows  the  American  ambassador  in  the 
European  court  scene  of  "  The  Goose  Girl  "  senti- 
mentally pulling  a  big  American  flag  out  of  the  pocket 
of  his  evening  coat  at  a  state  dinner  and  with  it  in  his 
hand  addressing  words  of  love  to  the  grand  duchess 
seated  at  his  left;  that  shows  a  motor-car  with  two 
men  on  the  box  drawing  up  modishly  in  "  Jack  and 
the  Beanstalk  "  and  then  continues  to  show  the  two 
men  perched  grandly,  arms  folded,  in  front  while  the 
lady  passenger  gets  out  as  best  she  can;  that  makes 
Sapho  an  angel ;  and  that  shows,  finally,  in  one  of  the 
best  known  of  New  York  picture  theatres,  a  motion 
picture  in  which,  at  the  beginning,  one  sees  a  young 
girl  —  "  An  orphan  with  no  friend  in  the  world," 
so  goes  the  title  —  and  in  which,  not  five  minutes 
afterward,  one  beholds  the  same  young  girl,  still  an 
orphan,  "  leaving  for  the  country  " —  so  the  title  ex- 
plains — "  with  her  father  and  mother." 


THE   POPULAR    THEATRE 

The  utter  fatuity  and  drivelish  content  of  these 
so-called  feature  films  with  their  prodigally  paid 
stars  and  directors  exceed  the  imagination  of  one  not 
privy  to  their  gestures.  On  my  table  as  I  write,  I 
have  before  me  the  literal  accounts  of  some  five  hun- 
dred of  these  pictures  culled  from  the  several  motion- 
picture  trade-journals  and  expounding  succinctly  and 
brilliantly  the  literature  of  the  art.  For  example,  I 
quote  first  from  these  casual  statistics  the  following 
chaste  synopsis  of  a  masterpiece  released  by  the 
Goldwyn  Company  and  entitled  "  Social  Ambition  " : 

Vincent  Manton  is  a  successful  business  man  possessed  of 
a  wife,  whose  sole  passion  is  the  attaining  of  social  rank.  In 
her  lavish  expenditure  she  reckons  not  her  mate's  financial 
limits  and  when  the  bank  calls  his  loans,  she  turns  from  him 
with  loathing  and  arranges  an  immediate  divorce.  His  previ- 
ous attempts  to  explain  his  finances  had  been  met  by  her 
declaration  of  an  ignorance  of  such.  Yet,  when  Manton  ar- 
ranges to  turn  over  the  bulk  of  his  shattered  possessions  she 
evinces  an  intimate  knowledge  of  the  schedules  at  the  at- 
torney's office. 

Manton  goes  to  Alaska,  taking  the  shack  of  a  former  pros- 
pector as  a  place  for  abode.  He  frequents  the  dance  hall 
of  Big  Dan  Johnson,  a  resort  more  than  well  stocked  with 
females.  Rose,  who  is  Dan's  foster  child  and  the  apple 
of  his  eye,  takes  pity  on  Manton,  in  whose  playing  of 
"  Home  Sweet  Home  "  on  the  piano  she  perceives  the  last 
despairing  cry  of  a  dying  soul.  She  talks  to  Manton,  who 
mistakes  her  for  one  of  the  gals,  and  for  the  presumed 
insult,  Manton  is  badly  beaten  up.  He  is  carried  to  his 
shack  and  later  Rose  comes  to  nurse  him,  bringing  on  an 
estrangement  from  Big  Dan. 

Gold  is  discovered  on  Manton's  place,  and  with  the  way 


ITS  MOTION  PICTURES 

to  fortune  in  sight,  he  goes  east  with  the  misgivings  of  his  new 
bride.  His  divorced  wife  makes  a  play  for  the  man  and 
he  still  possesses  the  old  fascination  for  her  until  he  dis- 
covers she  is  trying  for  his  new  fortune.  So  back  to  Alaska 
he  goes  to  find  his  bride  a  mother  and  to  tell  her  it's  the 
West  for  them  forever. 

Second,  the  scenario  (word  for  word)  of  an  epic 
produced  by  the  Graphic  Film  Company;  title, 
"Moral  Suicide": 

Richard  Covington,  an  aged  millionaire  and  stock  broker 
and  social  leader  of  California,  loyal  to  his  motherless  chil- 
dren, Waverly  and  Beatrice,  becomes  infatuated  with  Fay 
Hope,  a  woman  with  a  past  that  is  marred,  and  marries  her 
in  spite  of  the  protests  of  his  daughter.  Contaminated  by 
her  mode  of  life  and  her  associates,  he  loses  his  moral  cour- 
age—  commits  moral  suicide,  as  his  daughter  had  predicted 
—  and  becomes  estranged  from  his  daughter  Beatrice,  who 
is  ordered  from  her  father's  home  by  her  stepmother,  Fay 
Hope. 

Lucky  Travers,  a  New  York  gambler,  follows  Fay  to 
California.  He  is  her  affinity,  although  she  introduces  him 
to  Covington  as  her  brother.  As  such  he  becomes  the  sec- 
retary of  Covington.  An  old  friend  of  the  Covingtons 
recognizes  Fay  as  a  New  York  adventuress.  This  enrages 
Covington,  who  denounces  the  informant.  It  takes  Cov- 
ington some  time  to  discover  that  he  is  a  victim.  His  wife 
by  her  extravagance  makes  inroads  on  his  fortune.  Wa- 
verly, son  of  Covington,  finding  that  Travers  is  infatuated 
with  Fay,  fires  a  shot  at  Travers.  It  hits  Fay,  killing  her. 
Covington  spends  the  remainder  of  his  fortune  in  his  effort 
to  free  Waverly  from  the  charge  of  murder.  Waverly  is 
found  to  have  been  insane  at  the  time  of  the  killing  and  is 
sent  to  an  asylum. 


THE   POPULAR    THEATRE 

Bereft  of  family,  friends  and  fortune,  broken  down  in 
health  and  spirit,  Covington  drifts  to  New  York,  where 
he  seeks  employment.  To  prevent  starvation  he  accepts 
the  work  of  a  sandwich  man  advertising  a  white  light 
cabaret.  Seeking  refuge  from  the  piercing  winds  of  a 
winter's  night,  he  visits  the  cabaret  which  he  is  advertising 
and  finds  Beatrice  in  the  company  of  Travers  and  others 
drinking  and  acting  in  the  manner  of  a  wanton.  Coving- 
ton  is  horrified.  He  rushes  to  his  daughter  and  begs  her  to 
leave  the  place  with  him.  Beatrice,  surprised  at  her  father's 
appearance  and  his  evident  poverty,  refuses  to  go.  Cov- 
ington tells  her  that  fate  has  decreed  that  he  was  to  ad- 
vertise his  own  daughter's  shame  and  that  his  punishment 
is  too  great  to  bear.  Later  Beatrice  proves  to  her  father 
that  she  is  the  same  Beatrice  as  of  yore  and  that  her  pres- 
ence in  the  cabaret  is  a  matter  of  duty  to  her  country. 

Third,  a  brief  but  illuminating  record  of  the  theme 
of  a  five-part  drama  called  "  Dolly  Does  Her  Bit," 
by  Miss  Lucy  Sarver,  released  by  the  Pathe  Com- 
pany and  advertised  as  being  "  valuable  propaganda 
for  the  Red  Cross  Drive."  The  record : 

The  story  concerns  the  adventures  of  Dolly  when  she 
masquerades  as  a  life-size  doll,  which  was  to  have  been 
raffled  off  in  a  Red  Cross  benefit,  but  which  was  broken. 
She  cheers  up  the  lonely  life  of  a  rich  little  cripple  and  is 
also  the  means  of  capturing  a  band  of  burglars.  The  help- 
less invalid  thinks  Dolly  is  the  queen  of  the  dolls  come  to 
life  and  the  burglars  kidnap  her  when  she  discovers  them 
at  work  so  she  will  not  inform  the  authorities.  But  she 
escapes  and  causes  their  arrest. 

He  who  isn't  profoundly  moved  and  doesn't  help 

[134] 


ITS  MOTION  PICTURES 

the  Red  Cross  after  this  eloquent  plea  has  indeed  a 
leather  soul  I 

Fourth,  a  gem  by  Miss  Bess  Meredith,  featuring  a 
heavenly  mime  hight  Monroe  Salisbury  and  called 
"The  Red,  Red  Heart": 

Rhoda  Tuttle  is  taken  west  by  her  fiance  in  an  effort  to 
cure  her  of  extreme  melancholy.  While  visiting  at  a  friend's 
ranch  she  meets  Kut-Le,  an  educated  Indian  who  becomes 
devoted  to  her.  Kut-Le  knows  the  power  of  the  desert  to 
heal  the  ills  of  the  mind  and  body,  and  kidnaps  Rhoda.  Un- 
der his  care  she  gradually  becomes  robust,  but  desires  to  re- 
turn to  her  friends.  They,  however,  had  searched  tire- 
lessly for  her  and  finally  find  her  and  Kut-Le.  De  Witt,  her 
fiance,  endeavors  to  shoot  Kut-Le,  believing  him  guilty  of 
harming  Rhoda.  Here  it  is  that  the  girl  sees  the  noble 
spirit  of  the  Indian,  and  forsaking  her  white  friends  and 
lover,  returns  to  the  arms  of  Kut-Le  and  the  desert. 

Next,  an  incalculably  lovely  opus  called  "  Madame 
Jealousy:  An  Allegory,"  released  by  the  Paramount 
Company.  The  opus : 

Jealousy,  looking  through  the  mirror  of  Life,  sees  Charm 
and  Valor  happily  married  and  decides  to  put  Mischief  at 
work  to  mar  their  contentment.  She  succeeds,  and  soon 
Sorrow,  Treachery,  and  Rumor  play  their  parts  and  cause 
trouble  for  the  parents,  Finance  and  Commerce.  But  soon 
Happiness  is  born  to  Charm  and  Jealousy  and  her  compan- 
ions are  driven  from  the  hearts  of  all. 

"  Flare-Up  Sal,"  a  drama  by  J.  G.  Hawks,  pro- 
duced by  the  Paramount  Company,  deals,  so  the  sta- 
tistics inform  me,  with 


THE   POPULAR    THEATRE 

Sal,  a  waif  of  the  plains,  who  earns  the  sobriquet  of 
Flare-Up  in  the  Loola-Bird  dance  hall,  where  she  becomes  a 
dancer  and  defender  of  her  virtue,  after  deserting  her  foster- 
father  who  goes  broke  at  the  gaming  table.  Dandy  Dave 
Hammond  becomes  enamored  of  Sal,  but  is  restrained  from 
any  visible  demonstration  of  his  emotion.  Meanwhile  the 
stage  coach  is  held  up  by  the  Red  Rider,  who  apparently  has 
no  other  purpose  than  to  make  prisoner  a  preacher  journey- 
ing to  the  mining  camp.  The  Red  Rider  carries  the  man  of 
God  off  to  his  mountain  cabin,  and  donning  his  clerical  garb, 
goes  in  his  stead  to  the  camp.  His  arrival  is  the  occasion 
of  much  hilarity  from  all,  particularly  Sal,  whom  the  Rider 
has  heard  about  and  come  to  see.  He  holds  services  in  the 
church,  where  it  appears  he  is  destined  to  become  a  fixture, 
until  Dandy  Dave  takes  a  dislike  to  him,  and  attempts  to 
give  him  the  bum's  rush.  The  Rider,  however,  is  there  with 
the  rough  stuff,  it  being  his  profession,  and  he  proves  to  be 
one  too  many  for  the  man  of  cards.  The  climax  occurs 
within  the  dance  hall  when  the  Red  Rider  shoots  out  the 
lights  and  escapes  with  Sal,  who  meanwhile  has  come  to 
regard  him  in  a  personal  way. 

In  "  Society  for  Sale,"  from  the  brain  of  Miss 
Ruby  M.  Ayres,  and  produced  by  the  Triangle  Com- 
pany, I  learn  (again  quoting  verbatim)  that 

The  action  of  the  story  starts  within  the  first  few  feet 
of  film,  when  the  Honorable  Billy  goes  broke  and  receives 
a  financial  offer  to  open  the  gates  of  society  to  a  manikin  in 
a  modiste's  shop.  He  later  falls  in  love  with  the  girl  and 
proves  himself  very  much  of  a  man  when  put  to  the  test, 
especially  in  the  case  of  the  supposed  elopement  of  the  girl 
with  a  notorious  rounder  who,  incidentally,  turns  out  to  be 
her  father.  These  two  had  not  seen  each  other  for  many 
years  and  the  girl's  purpose  in  trying  to  get  into  society 

[136] 


ITS  MOTION   PICTURES 

was  to  investigate  the  stories  she  had  heard  about  her  parents 
before  she  revealed  herself  to  him. 

The  story  of  "  The  Oldest  Law,"  issued  by  the 
World  Film,  acquaints  me,  according  to  the  docu- 
ments, with 

The  daughter  of  a  mountain  hermit  who  comes  to  New 
York  on  the  death  of  her  father  and  secures  a  position  as 
typist  through  the  friendship  of  an  elderly  college  professor. 
Just  about  the  time  she  loses  it,  the  professor  dies  and  she  is 
without  funds.  She  spends  her  last  three  dollars  for  a 
dinner  at  the  Claridge.  Seated  at  another  table  is  a  young 
man  who  is  arranging  the  details  of  his  divorce  from  his 
wife.  He  follows  her  to  the  street  and  offers  her  the  post 
as  housekeeper  of  his  fashionable  apartment.  As  such  she 
entertains  his  guests  and  is  treated  as  his  social  equal. 

The  young  man's  wife  opens  a  gambling  house  with  the 
proceeds  of  her  alimony  and  when  a  professional  gambler 
fleeces  her  ex-husband  she  compels  the  crooked  sport  to  re- 
turn ex-hubby's  I.  O.  U.'s,  which  she  returns  to  him.  Mean- 
time, the  mountain  girl  agrees  to  marry  the  crook  if  he  will 
return  ex-hubby's  markers,  being  willing  to  sacrifice  herself 
to  save  him  from  ruin.  But  as  the  ex-wife  beats  her  to  it 
in  the  saving  process  she  is  left  free  to  marry  the  young  man. 

And,  by  way  of  a  particularly  fetching  finale,  I 
extract  from  the  records  the  following  nonesuch  pro- 
mulgated by  the  Fox  Film  Company  with  the  emi- 
nent Theda  Bara  in  the  big  role  and  called  "  The 
Soul  of  Buddha": 

The  story  opens  in  Java  with  English  soldiers  lolling 
about.  Miss  Bara  is  a  flirty  native  girl,  and  her  mother, 

[137] 


THE   POPULAR    THEATRE 

fearing  the  worst,  consecrates  her  to  Buddha.  She  is  taken 
to  the  high  priest  who  has  her  swear  to  love  no  other  than 
Buddha.  In  the  sanctuary  she  chafes  under  the  restraint 
and  casts  earthly  eyes  on  the  priest  and  almost  seduces  him. 
But  he  reminds  her  she  is  dedicated  to  the  spirit  and  re- 
sents her  blandishments. 

There  follows  a  sacred  dance  in  honour  of  Buddha,  at 
which  is  present  an  English  major.  Having  fasted,  she 
faints  in  his  arms,  and  the  priest  cries  that  he  has  touched 
the  flesh  of  a  sacred  maiden  and  must  die.  But  the  Eng- 
lishman escapes  with  the  girl  on  horseback,  followed  imme- 
diately by  the  priests,  who  happen  to  have  saddled  horses 
waiting  for  such  a  contingency.  The  Major  takes  her  to 
English  headquarters  and  quickly  marries  her.  Then  the 
pursuers  enter. 

The  priest  threatens  she  will  pay  the  price  and  departs. 
To  pacify  the  natives  the  Colonel  demands  the  Major's 
resignation.  The  married  couple  go  to  Scotland  and  she 
tells  her  husband  she  cannot  endure  the  bleak  weather.  He 
takes  her  back  to  her  native  village  where  a  child  is  born 
to  them.  The  priest  kills  the  infant,  leaving  a  "  black  hand  " 
mark  on  its  forehead.  The  husband  then  takes  her  to 
Paris,  where  she  is  melancholy.  He  must  return  to  Scot- 
land, and  she  elects  to  remain.  She  asks  her  maid  to  take 
•her  "  where  life  and  death  are  the  same."  Apache  cellar 
and  atmospheric  dance.  She  is  immediately  inspired  to  do 
her  native  dance.  Two  apaches  want  to  dance  with  her  and 
she  demands  they  fight  for  the  privilege.  Knives  drawn,  and 
she  escapes  with  a  theatrical  manager  who  is  there  in  search 
of  types  for  his  theatre.  At  her  home  the  manager  suggests 
she  dance  at  his  theatre  and  she  consents. 

The  husband  returns,  shadowed  by  the  High  Priest,  and 
protests  against  her  dancing  in  public,  but  she  scorns  him, 
casting  him  off.  At  a  reception  given  by  a  countess  she  cops 
her  ladyship's  husband  for  a  lover.  The  countess  comes  to 


ITS  MOTION  PICTURES 

her  home  and  pleads  with  her  to  give  up  her  man  and  she 
laughs  derisively.  The  priest  emerges  and  tells  the  countess 
not  to  worry. 

It  is  the  night  of  her  debut  as  a  public  performer.  Her 
husband  has  taken  to  drink  and  is  a  physical  wreck.  He 
pleads  to  be  near  her,  even  as  her  servant.  She  refuses  and 
he  promptly  shoots  himself.  With  her  maid  she  thrusts  the 
body  in  a  couch  chest  as  the  manager  and  her  count-lover 
rush  in  and  inquire  about  the  shot.  She  says  she  didn't 
hear  any,  and  they  do  not  detect  the  odor  of  freshly  dis- 
charged gunpowder  in  the  dressing  room.  There  follows  a 
sentimental  scene  with  her  count-lover.  The  priest  marks 
her  door  with  the  sign  of  death.  She  is  frightened,  but 
brazens  it  out. 

She  then  appears  before  the  public  with  the  stage  set  to 
represent  a  native  shrine.     After  dancing  she  strides  to  the 
shrine,  which  materializes  into  the  High  Priest,  who  takes 
her  in  his  arms,  kisses  her  and  stabs  her  to  death. 
#     *     * 

Turning  to  the  motion  picture  serials,  as  they  are 
known,  I  find  an  even  greater  artistic  and  literary 
quality.  For  example,  Episode  10  of  "  Vengeance 
and  the  Woman  "  (Vitagraph),  entitled  "  The  Cav- 
ern of  Terror,"  according  to  the  synopsis  shows  us 

Blake  and  his  wife,  Bess,  captives  in  a  cavern  where 
they  had  sought  to  evade  Black  Jack  and  his  gang.  But  as 
Bess  was  growing  faint  from  want  of  food,  Blake  decides 
to  run  the  gauntlet  of  the  outlaws'  fire  and  he  and  Bess  come 
out  into  the  open  again.  They  are  pursued  by  Black  Jack, 
and  finding  the  entrance  to  a  tunnel,  hide  there.  They  are 
followed  by  the  outlaws,  but  manage  to  make  the  other  end 
first.  There  they  are  seen  by  some  engineers  who  come  to 
their  rescue  and  a  fight  takes  place  between  Black  Jack's 
men  and  the  workmen.  One  of  the  engineers  is  killed  and 

[139] 


THE   POPULAR    THEATRE 

in  revenge  the  mountain  side  upon  which  the  outlaws  are 
standing  is  blasted  and  in  a  cloud  of  earth  and  rocks  their 
forms  are  buried.  But,  unfortunately,  Blake  and  Bess  are 
caught  in  the  upheaval,  too,  and  their  fate  is  left  until  the 
next  episode. 

In  another  episode  of  the  same  chef  d'oeuvre, 
called  "  The  Mountain  of  Devastation,"  we  are  in- 
formed that 

We  see  Blake  rescued  from  the  wolves'  gnawing  at  his 
body  and  carried  to  a  nearby  doctor.  We  see  Bess  escape 
from  the  outlaws  by  jumping  to  a  tall  tree  and  slipping  down 
to  her  husband  below.  Next  Black  Jack  and  his  gang  dyna- 
mite a  rock  above  Blake  and  Bess,  but  the  pair  miracu- 
lously escape  and,  rinding  a  cable  that  will  carry  them  to  the 
other  side  of  the  mountain,  they  start  swinging  across  the 
perilous  gap  in  the  mountain  when  Black  Jack  sees  them  and 
cuts  the  cable.  The  pair  are  then  plunged  into  the  rapids 
below. 

Of  Episode  2  in  "  The  House  of  Hate  "  (Pathe) , 
called  "  The  Tiger's  Eye,"  the  announcement  relates : 

Just  in  the  nick  of  time  Gresham  comes  to  Pearl's  aid  and 
saves  her  from  being  crushed  to  death  in  the  yard  of  the 
munitions  factory,  where  she  was  placed  by  the  masked  con- 
federate of  the  hooded  terror.  They  return  to  the  house, 
and  find  the  police  investigating  the  murder  of  old  man 
Waldon.  While  investigation  is  in  progress,  the  masked 
kidnapper  returns  and  as  he  is  about  to  shoot  Pearl  from 
the  window  he  is  shot  by  Gresham.  He  lives  long  enough 
to  tell  that  he  was  hired  to  kill  the  girl,  but  dies  before  he  can 
divulge  the  name  of  his  employer.  Later  that  night,  Pearl 
and  Gresham  arrange  a  trap,  whereby  they  will  be  able  to 
[140] 


ITS   MOTION  PICTURES 

photograph  the  murderer  of  Waldon  as  he  carries  out  his 
threat  to  rob  the  family  safe.  They  place  a  camera  in 
the  head  of  a  tiger  rug  and  when  the  robber,  who  proves  to 
be  the  hooded  terror,  is  working  on  the  combination  of  the 
safe,  the  flashlight  explodes,  allowing  the  hidden  camera 
to  perform  its  work.  While  Pearl  is  developing  the  film, 
the  hooded  terror,  who  has  overpowered  the  detective  on 
guard,  enters  the  darkroom  and  the  episode  closes  with  the 
girl  in  imminent  danger. 

While  Episode  10  in  "The  Hidden  Hand" 
(Pathe),  entitled  "  Cogs  of  Death,"  enravishes  us 
with 

The  order  procured  from  a  magistrate  by  Abner  Whitney 
for  Doris  and  Verda  to  leave  the  house  in  which  they  live. 
The  girls,  accompanied  by  Jack  Ramsay,  throw  themselves 
on  the  mercy  of  the  housekeeper,  who  puts  them  up  for  the 
time  being  in  her  quarters.  Abner  Whitney  has  opened 
the  safe  and  has  taken  the  locket  which  is  the  only  key  to 
the  secret  packet,  which  is  now  in  the  possession  of  the  Hid- 
den Hand,  who  was  almost  killed  by  the  fall  of  the  chimney 
in  the  preceding  episode,  and  has  been  revived  by  a  resuscitat- 
ing machine  of  his  own  invention  after  everything  else  had 
failed. 

By  a  ruse,  Dr.  Scarley  tricks  Doris  to  come  to  his  home, 
where  he  attempts  to  drug  her,  and  in  escaping  from  him 
the  girl  runs  afoul  of  the  Hidden  Hand  and  his  henchman, 
who  pursue  her  until  she,  in  desperation,  jumps  from  a 
bridge  into  a  coal  car  passing  below.  The  impact  of  the 
fall  stuns  the  girl  and  when  the  car  comes  to  a  stop  the 
Hidden  Hand  has  the  car  dumped  into  the  coal  pockets. 
The  insensible  girl  is  caught  on  the  endless  chain  coal  car- 
rier and  is  about  to  be  ground  to  pieces  between  the  cog 
wheels  when  the  episode  fades  out. 


THE   POPULAR    THEATRE 

The  way  in  which  a  moving  picture  play  is  writ- 
ten would  seem  to  be  something  as  follows:  The 
president  of  the  film  company,  desiring  a  new  scen- 
ario at  once,  calls  up  his  lawyer  and  asks  the  latter  to 
find  out  for  him  whether  or  not  there  is  a  copyright 
on,  let  us  say  for  example,  "  East  Lynne."  The  law- 
yer finds  out  that  there  is  no  copyright  on  "  East 
Lynne  "  and  the  president  of  the  film  company  then 
realizes  that  his  intuition  was  correct  and  that  "  East 
Lynne  "  will  make  an  excellent  moving  picture.  The 
president  of  the  film  company  thereupon  calls  in  a 
young  man  who  once,  in  August,  1903,  sold  a  story 
to  a  magazine  and  who  is  therefore  now  the  head 
scenario  writer  of  the  organization,  and  bids  the  fel- 
low forthwith  turn  "  East  Lynne  "  into  a  moving 
picture  play.  "  We  start  work  on  it  over  at  Fort 
Lee  in  a  couple  of  hours,  so  you'd  better  get  busy 
quick,"  the  president  of  the  film  company  remarks, 
and  the  scenario  writer  rushes  out,  buys  a  copy  of 
the  play,  and,  on  page  three,  locates  this  convenient 
synopsis  of  the  plot : 

"  Sir  Francis  Levison,  a  blase  man  of  fashion,  com- 
mits a  murder,  for  which  an  innocent  man,  Richard 
Hare,  is  suspected  and  arrested.  Richard  retains 
as  counsel  Archibald  Carlyle,  a  rising  young  lawyer. 
Carlyle  has  just  married  Lady  Isabel,  the  daughter 
of  an  Earl,  who  is  in  impoverished  circumstances. 
After  the  marriage  Lady  Isabel's  jealousy  is  wrought 
upon  by  the  clandestine  interviews  between  Barbara 
Hare,  Richard's  sister,  and  her  husband,  Archibald 
Carlyle.  The  interviews  are  merely  concerning  the 


ITS  MOTION  PICTURES 

defense  of  Richard  in  the  murder  trial;  but  Lady 
Isabel,  in  ignorance  of  this,  misconstrues  their  pur- 
pose, and  being  goaded  on  by  her  lover,  Levison,  con- 
sents to  an  elopement  with  him. 

"  A  few  years  pass,  and  Archibald  Carlyle  has  se- 
cured a  divorce  from  his  wife  and  married  Barbara 
Hare.  In  the  meantime  Lady  Isabel,  being  badly 
treated  by  Levison,  leaves  him  (he  having  neglected 
to  keep  his  promise  and  make  her  his  lawful  wife). 
She  learns  of  the  serious  illness  of  her  little  son,  who 
is  at  the  home  of  his  father,  Archibald  Carlyle,  and 
the  latter's  new  wife,  and  determines  to  apply  for  the 
position  of  nurse  for  the  little  one,  so  that  she  can  be 
by  the  bedside  of  her  boy  in  his  dying  hours.  Dis- 
guising herself  as  '  Madame  Vine,'  she  secures  the 
position,  but  overcome  by  the  death-bed  scene  of  her 
boy,  she  throws  off  her  disguise  and  reveals  herself 
to  him  as  his  mother.  A  reconciliation  between 
Lady  Isabel  and  Carlyle  is  brought  about  at  the 
death-bed  of  Lady  Isabel.  The  plot  also  shows  how 
Sir  Francis  Levison  meets  his  deserts  by  being 
brought  to  justice  as  the  real  murderer,  thus  securing 
the  acquittal  of  Richard  Hare." 

This  plot,  the  scenario-writer  promptly  makes  over 
into  a  moving  picture  scenario  as  follows : 

"  Sir  Francis  Levison,  a  blase  man  of  fashion, 
derails  the  Northern  Pacific  Midnight  Express  at 
Savannah,  Ga.,  for  which  crime  an  innocent  man, 
Richard  Hare,  is  suspected  and  arrested  by  a  mysteri- 
ous masked  detective  in  the  employ  of  the  United 

[143] 


THE   POPULAR    THEATRE 

States  Secret  Service.  Richard  retains  as  counsel 
Archibald  Carlyle,  a  rising  young  lawyer.  Carlyle 
has  just  married  Lady  Isabel,  the  daughter  of  John 
D.  Isabel,  a  great  Wall  Street  financier  who  is  now 
in  impoverished  circumstances.  After  the  marriage 
(Note:  I  think  it  would  be  a  good  idea  to  have  the 
marriage  take  place  in  front  of  St.  Patrick's  Cathe- 
dral on  a  snowy  day.  This  would  make  a  classy 
set),  Lady  Isabel's  jealousy  is  wrought  upon  by  the 
clandestine  interviews  in  a  lonely  light-house  between 
Barbara  Hare,  Richard's  sister,  and  her  husband, 
Archibald  Carlyle.  The  interviews  are  merely  con- 
cerning the  defense  of  Richard  in  the  derailment 
trial;  but  Lady  Isabel,  in  ignorance  of  this,  miscon- 
strues their  purpose,  and  being  goaded  on  by  her 
lover,  Levison,  consents  to  disguise  herself  that  night 
as  a  gypsy  and  elope  with  him  to  Palm  Beach  in  his 
high-power  racing  car.  (Note:  I  think  this' II  give 
a  good  chance  for  a  pursuit  scene. ) 

"  A  few  years  pass  and  Archibald  Carlyle  has  se- 
cured a  divorce  from  his  wife  (Note:  This  will 
make  a  swell  court-room  scene]  and  has  married 
Barbara  Hare.  In  the  meantime  Lady  Isabel,  being 
badly  treated  by  Levison,  leaves  him  (he  having  neg- 
lected to  keep  his  promise  and  make  her  his  lawful 
wife).  She  learns  of  the  serious  illness  of  her  little 
son,  who  is  at  George  Gould's  beautiful  place  in 
Lakewood  (the  home  of  the  little  son's  father,  Archi- 
bald Carlyle,  and  Archibald's  new  wife)  and  she  de- 
termines to  apply  for  the  position  of  nurse  so  that 
she  can  be  by  the  bedside  of  her  boy  in  his  dying 
hours.  Disguising  herself,  therefore,  as  a  Salvation 

[144] 


ITS  MOTION  PICTURES 

Army  lassie,  she  secures  the  position  but,  overcome 
by  the  death-bed  scene  of  her  boy,  she  throws  off  her 
disguise  and  reveals  herself  to  him  as  his  mother. 
Barbara,  overhearing  all  from  behind  a  palm,  dies 
of  heart-disease;  a  reconciliation  between  Lady  Isa- 
bel and  Carlyle  is  brought  about  at  the  death-bed; 
Lady  Isabel  confronts  Levison  and  reveals  herself 
the  mysterious  masked  agent  of  the  United  States 
Secret  Service  and,  after  a  desperate  hand-to-hand 
struggle  (during  which  in  a  'vision'  Levison,  who 
turns  out  to  have  been  a  white-slaver,  sees  again  the 
wreck  of  the  Midnight  Express  and  repents),  Lady 
Isabel  shoots  him  dead." 

This  done,  the  scenario-writer  hurries  back  with 
the  script  to  the  president,  who  renames  the  play  "  A 
Young  Girl's  Danger,"  shrewdly  sends  over  to  the 
Vitagraph  offices  to  buy  the  railroad  wreck  scene  used 
in  a  picture  four  years  before,  thus  saving  consider- 
able money  —  and  all  is  ready  for  the  camera. 


Wherewith,  I  turn  the  case  over  to  the  jury. 


Ens] 


PROPERTY  OF      ' 
DEPARTMENT  OF  DRAMATIC  ART 

* 

Chapter  Eleven:  Its  Actors 

Just  as  the  average  Broadway  actress'  notion  of 
interpreting  the  role  of  an  ingenue  consists  in  putting 
her  right  hand  back  of  her,  cocking  her  head  archly  to 
one  side  and  poking  out  her  stomach,  so  the  average 
Broadway  actor's  conception  of  a  young  man  of  fash- 
ion rests  in  draping  the  watch-chain  at  a  bizarre 
angle,  smearing  the  head  with  an  extra  quantity  of 
hair  salve,  and  buttoning  only  the  lower  button  of 
the  jacket.  The  mimetic  art  of  Broadway  is  a  di- 
rect descendant  of  the  mimetic  art  practised  by  us 
youngsters  around  the  age  of  ten  in  the  loft  of  the 
family  barn  —  an  art  in  which  the  Devil  was  always 
portrayed  by  means  of  a  red  undershirt  borrowed  for 
the  occasion  from  the  gentleman  employed  to  curry 
the  horses;  in  which  the  organ-grinder  was  depicted 
by  means  of  a  bandanna  and  an  ice-cream  freezer; 
.and  for  a  glimpse  of  which  the  art  lovers  of  the 
neighbourhood  were  taxed  a  variable  number  of  pins. 

The  average  histrionic  performance  on  the  aver- 
age Broadway  stage  is  related  to  acting  in  approxi- 
mately the  same  degree  that  a  certain  familiar 
species  of  French  pastry  is  related  to  Napoleon. 
When  the  average  Broadway  actor  essays  the  in- 
terpretation of  a  character,  his  method  of  procedure 
would  seem  to  be  not  to  ponder  that  character's  na- 
ture, appearance,  demeanour,  course  of  action  and 


ITS  ACTORS 

attitude  so  much  as  the  manner  in  which  the  actor 
who  played  a  similar  character  in  another  play  in  the 
previous  season  interpreted  the  character.  And 
what  would  appear  to  be  true  in  the  instance  of  this 
first  actor  would  appear  also  to  have  been  true  in  the 
instance  of  the  actor  whose  earlier  interpretation  he 
copies.  Thus,  out  of  a  sort  of  endless  chain,  are 
our  interpretations  and  characterizations  brought 
down  to  us  —  with  the  result  that  a  socially  well- 
placed  bachelor  is  never  under  any  circumstance  pre- 
sented to  us  save  as  a  fellow  given  to  an  immoderate 
use  of  brandy  and  soda  and  a  dinner  coat  which  he 
periodically  removes  in  view  of  the  audience  and  for 
which  he  substitutes  a  velvet  smoking  jacket  having  a 
great  deal  of  filigree  work  around  the  pockets,  or  an 
affluent  old  gentleman  in  no  guise  other  than  a  crea- 
ture given  to  lavish  boutonnieres,  the  habit  of  mop- 
ping off  his  brow  with  his  'kerchief  and  the  invariable 
practice  of  appearing  upon  the  decks  of  ocean  steam- 
ships in  a  light  tan  automobile  duster. 

As  stereotyped  and  as  recognizable  as  these  are 
the  pictures  which  the  Broadway  grimaciers  present 
omnipresently  to  our  vision  in  other  directions.  The 
coy  young  thing  who  interprets  girlish  cunning  by 
pinning  a  false  and  very  bouncy  curl  to  the  rear  of 
her  coiffure,  by  sitting  on  her  right  foot  and  by  con- 
ducting herself  generally  like  a  Bromo  Seltzer,  is  as 
familiar  as  the  actor  who  pictures  the  heroic  young 
lieutenant  in  the  war  plays,  who  comes  out  of  battle 
for  all  the  world  as  if  a  battle  were  a  barber-shop, 
who  plays  the  sentimental  scenes  mainly  with  his 
Adam's  apple,  and  whose  idea  of  depicting  defiance 

[147] 


THE   POPULAR    THEATRE 

is  to  stand  with  his  feet  wide  apart.  Equally  fa- 
miliar are  the  crook  who  indicates  perturbation  and 
nervousness  by  shifting  his  glance  quickly  from  the 
occupants  of  Box  A  on  the  right  to  the  occupants  of 
Box  B  on  the  left,  and  who  interprets  his  evil  nature 
chiefly  in  terms  of  a  collarless  neck-band  fastened 
conspicuously  in  front  with  a  gold  collar-button;  the 
wronged  wife  who  never  enters  the  library  or  looks 
out  of  the  window  without  clutching  a  portiere,  and 
who  indicates  her  pent-up  feeling  of  despondency  by 
making  two  fists  high  in  the  air  and  coincidentally 
throwing  back  her  shoulders;  and  the  great  novelist 
who,  when  wooing  an  idea,  walks  up  and  down  the 
stage  running  his  fingers  through  his  hair,  and  who 
finally  indicates  that  the  inspiration  has  come  to  him 
by  banging  on  the  table. 

That  the  actor  is  inevitably  to  blame  for  such 
humours  is,  doubtless,  a  contention  somewhat  —  in- 
deed, often  far  —  removed  from  the  facts.  One 
recalls,  for  example,  the  incident  of  the  stage  pro- 
ducer who  put  on  a  piece  in  which  that  mirthful  co- 
mique,  Mr.  Walter  Jones,  was  playing  the  role  of  a 
tramp,  and  who,  on  the  ground  that  he  desired 
to  inject  a  smart  tone  into  the  proceedings,  or- 
dered Jones  to  take  his  hands  out  of  his  pockets. 
That  the  stage  producers  are  the  really  guilty  par- 
ties on  many  occasions,  one  is  not  loath  to  believe. 
Themselves  often  alumni  of  the  Broadway  caboti- 
nage,  themselves  often  erstwhile  interpreters  of  the 
role  of  Schuyler  Van  Rensselaer,  the  young  society 
man  who  ubiquitously  embellishes  metropolitan  draw- 
ing-rooms in  a  pair  of  white  flannel  trousers,  these 


ITS  ACTORS 

producers  —  now  a  rapidly  fading  order  —  are 
doubtless  on  more  than  one  such  occasion  the  Czol- 
gozs,  the  Cocchis,  the  Lieutenant  Beckers,  the  Leut- 
gerts.  It  is  they  who  murder  further  the  corpse  of 
what  once  might  have  been  the  art  of  acting;  it  is  they 
who  bring  an  actress  to  express  indecision  by  placing 
her  index  finger  alongside  her  right  eye,  who  suggest 
that  an  actor  register  horror  by  staring  out  wide-eyed 
at  Mr.  James  Metcalfe,  and  who  order  a  juvenile  to 
interpret  the  role  of  a  college  man  in  terms  of  a  two- 
button  fancy  waistcoat,  a  resplendent  hat  band  and  a 
penchant  for  sitting  on  tables. 

The  acting  one  encounters  in  the  duchy  of  the 
cinema,  a  species  of  posturing  and  anticking  at  which 
the  superior  snicker  —  and  most  often  rightly  —  is 
not  the  only  impoverished  and  absurd  tactic  upon  the 
native  democratic  amusement  platform.  The  stages 
of  Broadway  are  generally  as  fragrant  with  the 
musks  of  incompetence  and  grotesquerie.  Tradi- 
tions have  dug  their  claws  so  deeply  into  these  stages 
—  the  worst  traditions  —  that  the  screams  of  acting 
imagination  and  finesse  may  be  heard  nightly  in  the 
demesne.  Huddled,  an  expatriate  group,  beyond 
the  light  of  the  Broadway  stage  door,  stand  the  mem- 
ories of  Duse  and  Salvini,  of  the  Ethel  Barrymore 
that  was  and  the  Arnold  Daly  that  is,  while  upon  the 
warm  and  glowing  boards  within  tread  to  dunder- 
headed  poundings  upon  palms  the  unfinished,  unlet- 
tered, unintelligible  mountebanks  of  the  moment,  a 
dizzy  procession  of  upstairs-tailors'  dummies,  po- 
maded witlings,  broad  "  a  "-d  Mizzourians,  vivi- 
fied Punch  and  Judys.  For  one  William  Faver- 


THE   POPULAR    THEATRE 

sham  who  knows  how  to  indicate  an  overpowering 
surprise,  there  are  twenty  rubber-stamp  pantaloons 
whose  idea  of  expressing  the  emotion  is  falling  back 
into  a  chair  with  legs  extended  and  arms  flopping 
over  the  sides.  And  for  one  Lenore  Ulrich  who 
knows  how  to  indicate  tense  suppressed  emotion, 
there  are  a  score  of  begauded  blank  cartridges  who 
know  no  other  way  than  to  draw  the  mouth  into  a 
tight  line,  distend  the  nostrils  and  negotiate  a  hissing 
intake  of  breath.  They  obey  not  art,  as  Houssaye 
urged;  they  obey  tradition.  And  not  the  best  tradi- 
tion, but  the  traditions  of  the  cheap  melodrama 
stages  of  the  yesterdays. 

One  of  the  Goncourts  wrote  that  "  declamation 
may  be  noble,  majestic  and  tragic  with  simplicity." 
How  many  actors  realize  the  truth  of  this?  How 
many,  instead,  seek  to  syringe  a  nobility,  a  majesty, 
a  tragic  beauty  into  their  declamation  by  means  of 
elaborate  physical  and  vocal  gymnastics,  face-mak- 
ings, chest-heavings,  nose-blowings,  gallery-gazings, 
bronchial  coups  and  a  blinding  diamond  ring?  The 
average  actor,  as  we  lay  eye  to  him  in  the  popular 
-theatre,  is  approximately  as  irrelevant,  incompetent 
and  immaterial  as  a  love  letter  offered  in  evidence  at 
a  trial  for  automobile  speeding.  He  has  at  his  com- 
mand not  even  the  rudiments  of  his  trade.  Called 
upon  to  speak  three  simple  words  in  French  —  words 
easily  within  the  scope  of  even  the  humblest  Swiss 
bus  boy  —  he  finds  himself  completely  at  sea.  (In 
one  of  the  productions  currently  on  view  in  New 
York,  an  actor  who  has  a  record  of  something  like 
thirty-five  years  of  stage  work  behind  him  is  sum- 


ITS  ACTORS 

moned  to  allude  to  the  "  Jardin  de  Plaisir."  What 
comes  from  his  lips  nightly  is  something  that  sounds 
like  Shardoon  dee  Place-ear.)  Called  upon  to  play 
a  few  simple  chords  upon  the  piano,  he  is  equally  at 
sea  and  must  rely  on  someone  stationed  at  a  key- 
board in  the  wings.  Called  upon  to  give  a  brief 
turn  with  the  foils,  he  has  to  resort  to  slapping  his 
foil  against  that  of  his  equally  inept  opponent  alter- 
nately above  his  head  and  below  his  knees,  for  all  the 
world  as  if  he  were  bouting  with  the  broadsword. 
Called  upon  to  dance  a  few  steps  of  the  minuet  in 
a  play  of  the  yesterdays  and  the  result  is  a  cross 
between  a  fox  trot  and  a  hanging  onto  a  Subway 
strap.  Called  upon  to  play  a  role  requiring  poise 
and  distinction,  the  issue  is  the  spectacle  of  a  man 
who  would  seem  to  imagine  that  poise  consists  in  af- 
fecting unconcern  as  to  the  disposition  of  the  tails 
of  one's  dress  coat  when  one  seats  oneself,  and  that 
an  air  of  distinction  may  be  conveyed  by  wearing  an 
immense  gardenia  and  aloofly  addressing  the  butler 
over  one's  shoulder. 

What,  at  bottom,  the  reason  for  all  this,  the 
reason  for  this  general  incompetence  of  the  actor? 
It  may  be  discovered,  readily  enough,  in  the  impulse 
of  every  aspirant  to  histrinoic  honours  to  woo  the 
transitory  laurel  of  the  moment  at  the  expense  of  the 
more  lasting  and  permanent  award  that  comes  out 
of  years  of  striving  and  study,  out  of  years  of  careful 
preparation  and  a  gradually  cumulative  proficiency. 
The  actor  thinks,  in  this,  like  a  woman  still  single  at 
thirty:  it  is  a  case  of  getting  a  husband  immediately 
or  never.  He  declines  to  content  himself  with  an  ar- 


THE   POPULAR    THEATRE 

tistic  investment  in  slow,  but  sure,  Bethlehem  Steel 
and  rushes  instead  to  the  theory  of  the  immediate  mil- 
lions of  glory  in  some  vague  gold  mine  stock  of  the 
Curb  Market.  Said  Max  Beerbohm,  himself  brother 
to  an  actor  and  so  privy  to  an  actor's  thoughts, 
'  The  actor's  art  is  evanescent,  and  he  must  needs, 
therefore,  be  hectic  in  his  desire  for  fame.  Good 
books  and  good  pictures  are  monuments  which,  once 
made,  are  always  there  and  may  take  fresh  garlands; 
but  the  actor's  impersonation  repeated  night  after 
night,  is  a  thing  of  no  substance,  exists  not  but  from 
his  lips,  perishes  with  him.  Other  artists  can  af- 
ford to  wait.  But  it  is  now  or  never  with  the  actor." 
Of  course,  these  are  no  new  words;  the  Frenchmen 
spoke  them  many  years  before  Beerbohm;  but  their 
probity  remains  through  the  ages.  And  thus  it  is 
that  the  actor,  the  good  with  the  bad,  views  his  career 
less  as  a  career  than  as  a  careen,  a  taking  at  top  speed 
of  a  perilous  corner.  His  goal  is  not  tomorrow,  but 
tonight.  The  cheap  applause  of  Broadway  sings  in 
his  ears  a  lovelier  music  than  the  substantial  com- 
mendation of  the  potential  morrow.  And  so  he 
rushes  at  his  profession  like  a  bargain-hunting 
woman,  unprepared,  wildly,  groping  blindly,  indis- 
criminately. He  is  after  not  reputation  so  much  as 
"  a  hit."  His  rainbow's  end  is  in  the  next  morn- 
ing's newspaper  reviews,  appraisals  as  insecure  as  so 
many  gilt  chairs,  as  unlasting  as  white  gloves.  In  all 
New  York  at  this  moment  there  are  probably  not 
more  than  five  actors,  at  the  most,  out  of  all  the 
many  thousands,  who  can  pronounce  correctly  the 
simple  French  word  for  "  time,"  the  simple  German 


ITS  ACTORS 

m 

word  for  "  church,"  the  simple  Italian  word  for 
"  yesterday " —  or  who  know  how  to  pronounce 
correctly  the  simple  English  word  "  poniard." 
There  are  probably  not  more  than  four  who  have 
ever  read  more  than  one  play,  at  the  most,  by  Ger- 
hart  Hauptmann,  the  dramatic  genius  of  their  time. 
There  are  probably  not  more  than  three  who  can  tell 
you  one  single  thing  about  the  work  of  Giacosa,  or 
Perez-Galdos,  or  Andreyev,  or  de  Curel.  There 
are  probably  not  more  than  two  who  have  ever 
studied  the  work  of  such  excellent  actors  of  their 
period  as  Schroth  or  Guitry  or  August  Lindberg,  as 
Madeline  Roch  or  Julia  Hakanson  or  even  Marie 
Lohr.  And  there  is  probably  not  more  than  one 
who,  on  his  sacred  word  of  honour,  can  tell  you 
that  he  really  understands  what  Ibsen's  "  The  Wild 
Duck  "  is  about ! 

One  wonders^  what  the  talented  actors  of  the 
American  stage  t"hink  of  the  countless  mountebanks 
who  have  invaded  their  profession  and  made  of  it 
a  thing  for  jest  and  ridicule.  What  does  a  man  like 
Drew  think,  or  a  man  like  Ditrichstein,  or  one  like 
Arnold  Daly?  This  last,  incidentally,  is  today 
doubtless  the  foremost  actor  on  the  native  stage.  To 
watch  him  is  to  be  almost  persuaded  that  there  may 
after  all  be  something  approaching  to  an  art  in  the 
business  of  performing  a  dramatic  role,  that  acting 
may  after  all  call  on  somewhat  higher  qualifications 
than  a  well-modulated  speaking  voice,  a  decent  dress- 
coat  and  amorous  eyelashes.  It  is  said  by  certain  of 
Daly's  admirers  that  he  is  the  actor  he  is  because  he 
is  an  intelligent  man;  but  this,  of  course,  is  merely  the 

[153] 


THE   POPULAR    THEATRE 

stereotyped  nonsense  ever  exuded  when  an  actor  re- 
veals himself  superior  to  the  lack-lustre  generality  of 
his  fellows.  Intelligence  is  no  more  essential  to  a 
good  actor  than  it  is  essential  to  a  good  sculptor  or  a 
good  Pullman  porter.  It  is  no  more  necessary  that 
Mr.  Daly  be  able  to  distinguish  between  Pascal  of 
Clermont-Ferrand  and  Pascal  of  the  Marigny  or  be- 
tween Euclid's  axiom  of  parallels  and  the  Malthusian 
doctrine  than  it  is  necessary  for  me  to  be  able  to  dis- 
tinguish between  Cherryola  rouge  and  Exovia  paste 
or  to  know  how  to  take  a  headlong  dive  out  of  a 
stage  window  after  the  manner  of  Don  Cezar  de 
Bazan  without  breaking  my  neck. 

Daly,  I  thoroughly  believe,  is  the  best  actor 
amongst  us  for  the  reason  that  if  he  is  in  sooth  an 
intelligent  man  he  has  the  good  sound  actor-sense  to 
forget  the  fact  the  moment  he  passes  into  the  stage 
door.  Thus,  where  certain  of  his  competitors,  pos- 
sessing a  modicum  of  intelligence,  cannot  resist  the 
vanity  of  parading  that  modicum  upon  the  stage,  to 
the  all  too  obvious  embarrassment  of  the  already  per- 
fectly thought  out  work  of  the  author,  Daly,  with  his 
superior  intelligence,  sees  the  humour  of  his  con- 
freres' pea-fowlish  carrying  of  cinders  to  New- 
castle, appreciates  that  intelligence  is  the  business  of 
the  dramatist  and  humility  before  that  intelligence 
the  business  of  the  actor,  and  so  makes  of  himself  the 
most  genuinely  intelligent  and  fully  praiseworthy 
actor  in  our  entire  theatre.  When  Daly  walks  upon 
the  stage,  an  audience  may  rest  secure  in  the  knowl- 
edge that  what  it  is  about  to  visualize  is  not  an 

[-54] 


ITS  ACTORS 

actor's  idea  of  an  author's  play,  but  an  author's  idea 
of  an  author's  play. 

There  is  much  nonsense  in  the  appraisal  of  histri- 
onism.  I  myself,  in  the  years  of  my  novitiate,  nego- 
tiated my  full  share.  I  recall  now,  and  not  without 
a  mellow  shaking  of  the  head,  what  an  engaging  ass 
I  must,  in  those  days,  have  been:  how  seriously  and 
Johnsonianly  I  was  wont  to  analyze  this  and  that 
acting  performance  and  read  into  such  performances 
things  that  must  have  both  astonished  and  set  to 
chuckling  any  actor  foolish  enough  to  read  what  I 
wrote.  But  at  least  I  got  over  the  practice  of  such 
juicy  bosh.  One  does,  in  time.  And  it  is  therefore 
possible  that  the  critical  gentlemen  of  some  of  the 
current  gazettes,  in  say  ten  years  .  .  .  twenty  years 
.  .  .  thirty  .  .  . 

Those  of  our  American  commentators  who  still 
view  acting  as  an  art  (forgetting  that  such  great 
actors  as  Coquelin  and  Salvini  in  their  more  lucid 
moments  themselves  hooted  at  the  notion)  are  the 
same  who  in  their  critical  writings  on  drama  and 
literature  allude  to  the  so-called  Continental  view- 
point under  the  belief  that  the  term  signifies  only 
something  more  or  less  directly  related  to  indiscrimi- 
nate venery.  Upon  the  fine  artists  in  musical  com- 
position, everyone  agrees.  Upon  the  fine  artists  in 
the  interpretation  of  these  compositions,  everyone 
agrees.  Upon  the  artists  in  paint  and  in  marble  and 
in  drama  and  in  literature,  everyone  agrees.  If 
acting  is  an  art,  why  cannot  the  supposed  authorities 
similarly  agree?  Why  the  Duse  —  yes,  Bernhardt 


THE   POPULAR    THEATRE 

—  no,  Bernhardt  —  yes,  Duse  —  no,  pother?  Why 
the  mess  over  Mounet-Sully  ?  Why  the  debates  over 
Mansfield?  Why  the  endless  arguments  over  the 
Sicilian  Aguglia  ?  Why,  in  England,  the  yes  and  no 
over  Beerbohm  Tree?  In  Germany,  over  Alexan- 
der Moissi?  In  America,  over  Daly?  If  acting 
is  an  art,  where  the  standards?  And  why  is  only 
Salvini  greeted  in  the  unanimous  affirmative  ? 

No  one  doubts  that  Beethoven  and  Brahms,  that 
Kreisler  and  Hambourg,  that  Rembrandt  and  Ru- 
bens, that  Michelangelo  and  Mercie,  that  Ibsen  and 
Hauptmann,  that  Shakespeare  and  Conrad  were  and 
are  artists.  Why  is  there  no  unanimous  agreement 
upon  the  high  priests  of  histrionism?  Plainly 
enough,  for  the  same  reason  that  there  is  no  unan- 
imous agreement  upon  race  horses,  prize  fighters, 
ball  players,  one-step  dancers  or  different  brews  of 
beer.  Why  otherwise,  no  greater  concurrence  in  the 
appraisals  of  Mrs.  Fiske,  of  Madame  Simone  (the 
French  critics  hold  her  a  first-rate  artist  where  the 
Anglo-Saxon  critics  merely  snicker),  of  Emanuel 
Reicher  (the  German  critics  hold  him  a  great  actor; 
the  American  critics  refuse  to  accept  him),  of  even 
Sam  Sothern  (the  British  critics  consider  him  an  ar- 
tist; the  native  critics  consider  him  but  a  melancholi- 
ous  pantaloon)  ? 

The  truth  is  not  difficult  of  plumbing.  Art  has  the 
quality  of  universality;  acting  is  more  or  less  a  thing 
sectional.  Madame  Morizumi  is  regarded  as  the 
greatest  artist  of  the  Japanese  stage.  She  is  vener- 
ated by  the  Japanese.  In  France  or  Germany  or 
England  or  America  her  methods  would,  it  is  safe  to 


ITS  ACTORS 

assume,  be  laughed  at.  On  the  other  hand,  a  critic 
and  scholar  lately  attached  to  the  Japanese  embassy 
in  Washington  once  assured  me  that  in  his  estimation 
Forbes-Robertson's  Hamlet  was,  I  quote  his  words, 
"  as  bad  an  example  of  acting  as  gives  your  American 
actors  Mr.  Robert  Mantell  and  Mr.  John  E.  Kel- 
lerd."  The  Hamlet  of  the  celebrated  Russian  actor 
Glagolin  would  seem  as  poor  a  Hamlet  to  Western 
audiences  as  the  Hamlet  of  E.  H.  Sothern  would 
doubtless  seem  to  Eastern.  Dalmatoff's  Quex  won 
the  highest  and  soundest  critical  praise  of  Petrograd. 
Yet  it  is  recorded  that  a  British  critic  who  witnessed 
the  actor's  performance,  and  who  further  confessed 
that  he  had  never  seen  Hare  in  the  role  and  was  so 
not  prejudiced,  and  yet  it  is  recorded  that  this  critic 
observed  that  never  had  he  seen  a  poorer  perform- 
ance of  any  role ! 

Acting  is  a  thing  almost  as  local  as  Rugby, 
baseball  or  any  other  sport.  It  is  a  pastime  and,  as 
such,  open  to  local  prejudices,  tastes  and  predilec- 
tions. The  jury  that  sits  in  judgment  upon  it  is  like 
a  cosmopolitan  jury  that  sits  upon  woman's  beauty; 
a  jury  that  decides  according  to  each  of  its  twelve 
separate  and  divergent  national  standards.  The 
world,  without  exception,  recognizes  the  Fifth  Sym- 
phony to  be  a  great  work  of  art.  In  all  probability 
the  greatest  acting  performance  of  more  modern 
times  was  the  performance  of  the  central  role  in  Sud- 
ermann's  "  Heimat "  by  Eleanora  Duse.  And  yet 
several  of  the  leading  British  critics  asserted  that 
Duse  had  not  so  much  as  touched  the  role  —  and  yet 
the  French  critics  to  a  man  asserted  that  the  perform- 

[157] 


THE   POPULAR    THEATRE 

ance  could  not  be  compared  with  that  of  Bernhardt 
—  and  yet  the  Italian  and  Spanish  critics  asserted 
that  the  performance  of  Bernhardt  could  not  be  com- 
pared with  that  of  Duse  —  and  yet  a  practised  and 
well  educated  and  thoroughly  trained  Scandinavian 
critic,  stage  director  and  actor,  August  Lindberg,  if 
I  do  not  forget  his  name,  asserted  that  neither  Duse 
nor  Bernhardt  had  given  a  proper,  an  authentic,  in- 
terpretation of  the  role! 

While,  of  course,  it  is  perfectly  true  that  a  work 
of  art  is  often,  and  may  often,  be  debated,  and  elo- 
quently, on  both  its  sides,  it  is  yet  scarcely  conceivable 
that  the  master  works  of  art,  if  they  be  debated  at  all, 
be  not  debated  eventually  to  a  conclusion:  a  conclu- 
sion establishing  them  in  their  proper  place  and  to 
their  proper  stature  and  estate.  That  this  conclu- 
sion is  never  reached  in  the  matter  of  acting  and  act- 
ing performances  is  pertinent,  significant.  No  more, 
indeed,  is  the  conclusion  ever  reached  in  the  argu- 
ment over  the  putting  of  Worcestershire  sauce  in 
soup. 

Rejane,  an  accomplished  actress,  confessed  to  a 
pinch  of  strong  smelling  salts  in  her  handkerchief 
when  asked  by  a  friend  how  she  achieved  her  dra- 
matic flow  of  tears.  The  dramatist  creates;  it  is  im- 
pertinence for  the  actor  to  attempt  to  usurp  for  him- 
self the  dramatist's  right  —  this,  the  word  of  Coque- 
lin.  Zacconi,  the  illustrious  Italian  actor,  once  re- 
marked that  the  best  actor  was  that  actor  who  re- 
mained constantly  mindful  of  the  prejudices  of  his 
audiences  and  played  to  those  prejudices.  Enrique 
Borras,  the  leading  actor  of  the  Comedia  Theatre 


ITS  ACTORS 

of  Madrid,  has  whispered  that  he  cannot  reproduce 
laughter  on  the  stage  unless  he  bethinks  him  at  the 
relevant  moment  of  the  picture  of  a  fat  gentleman 
in  a  green  suit  falling  down  stairs.  D.  W.  Griffith, 
the  motion  picture  director,  in  his  early  training  of 
Mary  Pickford  used  to  employ  some  dozen  or  so 
flappers  to  rehearse  in  turn  the  scenes  the  Pickford 
was  subsequently  to  play  and  from  each  of  these  flap- 
pers would  appropriate  for  and  visit  upon  the  Pick- 
ford  some  effective  girlish  trick  or  cunning  bit  of  busi- 
ness so  that  the  Pickford,  when  finally  she  played  the 
scene,  became  a  composite  of  the  prettiest  little  man- 
nerisms of  the  experimental  twelve.  And  the  Mae 
Marsh  girl  was  made  by  the  same  process.  .  .  . 
Well,  well,  it  may  be  an  art  after  all,  may  acting,  but 
so  then,  too,  by  the  same  process  of  ratiocination, 
may  be  the  laying  of  marquetry  floors,  the  making  of 
fine  mince  pies  and  the  training  of  runners  for  the 
hundred-yard  dash.  .  ,  . 


PROPERTY  OF 
DEPARTMENT  OF  DRAMATIC  ART 

Chapter  Twelve:  Its  First  Nights 

Nothing  truer  has  ever  been  written  than  that 
the  worth  of  a  new  play  is  decided  for  once  and  all 
by  the  attitude  of  the  New  York  first-night  audience. 
Contradiction  fails;  debate  collapses;  the  fact  re- 
mains. If  the  attitude  of  the  New  York  first-night 
audience  toward  a  new  play  is  cold  and  sniffish,  if  it 
mocks  and  jeers  at  that  play  and  makes  sarcastic 
cracks  in  the  lobby  between  the  acts,  if  it  refrains 
from  bravos  and  applause,  not  all  the  critical  elo- 
quence of  all  the  newspaper  reviewers  in  New  York 
City  combined  can  succeed  in  proving  to  the  skeptic 
that  the  play  is  a  bad  one. 

The  old  pickle-herrings  used  to  tell  us  that  the 
best  way  to  determine  whether  one's  amber  pipe-stem 
was  genuine  amber  or  merely  imitation  was  to  drop 
it  into  alcohol.  If  it  melted  into  nothing,  one  might 
be  certain  that  one  hadn't  been  imposed  upon  and 
that  the  amber  was  the  real  thing.  The  same  test 
may  be  applied  to  plays.  If  the  play  is  a  genuine 
play,  it  will  not  survive  its  first-night  audience.  The 
reason  is  simple  enough.  And  here  it  is. 

It  is  the  boast  of  every  regular  New  York  first- 
nighter  that  he  goes  to  the  theatre,  not  in  search  of 
authentic  drama,  but,  in  his  phrase,  "  just  to  be 
amused."  A  scrutiny  of  the  statistics  reveals  clearly 
[160] 


ITS  FIRST  NIGHTS 

that  he  is  not  amused  by  good  writing,  nimble  ideas, 
sharp  characterization,  searching  philosophy  and  the 
component  parts  of  good  drama.  He  is,  to  the  con- 
trary, amused  primarily  by  such  characterizations 
as  rest  in  a  forty-eight  year  old  actress'  depiction  of 
a  flapper  by  standing  firmly  on  one  foot  and  coyly, 
with  head  drooped,  twisting  the  other  in  an  out- 
ward direction,  and  by  such  philosophies  as  lie  in  a 
rebellious  heroine's  challenge  to  her  cruel  father  that 
she  didn't  ask  to  be  born.  To  such  stimuli  the  New 
York  first-night  audience  seldom  fails  to  echo.  Does 
the  leading  man  tenderly  observe  that  the  heroine's 
hair  is  like  a  mass  of  burnished  copper  or  that  her 
teeth  are  like  pearls,  the  effect  is  electric.  Does  he, 
per  contra,  remark  a  trifle  less  conventionally  that 
the  fair  heroine  is  like  a  bright  flag  flying  in  the 
breeze  (as  in  Mr.  Austin  Strong's  play  "  Bunny") 
and  the  effect  is  palsy-stricken.  Does  a  pantaloon 
moistly  ruminate  that  the  heroine  is  like  a  broken 
flower  tossed  aside  on  the  cruel  highway  of  life 
there  unnoticed  and  scorned  to  fade  and  wither  and 
die,  and  the  sniffles  take  on  the  volume  of  a  New 
Hampshire  hay-fever  cantonment.  Does  a  ma- 
demoiselle look  fixedly  at  the  Brussels  while  some 
noble  Bushman  leans  close  to  her  right  ear  and  mur- 
murs therein  that  there  are  greater  things  after  all 
than  fame  and  fortune  and  a  career  —  a  tiny  cottage 
all  covered  with  roses  and  little  children  laughing 
and  pulling  at  her  apron-strings  —  and  the  ocular 
salt-drops  flow  like  bock  beer  in  West  Street. 

This  innocence,  this  anaesthesia  to  somewhat  less 
obvious  stratagems  and  to  fine  drama  and  the  things 

[161] 


THE   POPULAR    THEATRE 

of  fine  drama,  is  not  difficult  to  understand  when 
one  considers  the  personnel  of  the  metropolitan  first- 
night  gathering.  This  latter  is  made  up,  for  the 
most  part,  of  the  school  that  believes  de  Curel  is 
what  Delia  Fox  used  to  wear  on  her  forehead  and 
that  Brieux  is,  true  enough,  rather  tasty,  but  on  the 
whole  not  quite  so  palatable  as  Port  du  Salut.  It  is 
probably  an  eminently  safe  wager  that,  when  the  cur- 
tain lifts  on  the  average  Broadway  premiere,  there 
are  not,  at  the  very  most,  ten  persons  in  the  entire 
audience  who  know  that  Riiderer  is  not  a  brand  of 
champagne,  that  Anatole  France  is  not  a  French 
adaptation  of  Schnitzler  and  that  Richard  Strauss  is 
not  the  junior  partner  of  Abraham  &  Strauss'  de- 
partment store  in  Brooklyn.  And,  in  the  entire  au- 
dience, there  are  in  all  probability  not  more  than 
two  or  three,  at  the  outside,  who  are  able  clearly  to 
distinguish  between  Verdun  and  Verdi  or  J.  S.  Bach 
of  Thuringia  and  J.  S.  Bache  of  the  Wall  Street 
firm  of  J.  S.  Bache  &  Co.  The  intellectual  drive  of 
the  first-night  gathering  is  pointed  in  directions  other 
than  these.  For  while  that  gathering  may  not  be 
quite  sure  that  the  Waverly  novels  were  not  written 
by  Scotti,  it  is  thoroughly  posted  as  to  whether 
Geraldine  Farrar  loves  her  husband  —  and  how 
much  —  and  whether  Bert  Williams  does  or  doesn't 
travel  in  the  same  car  with  the  rest  of  the  company. 
And  while  it  may  possibly  confuse  H.  G.  Wells  with 
Trelawney,  and  Capus  with  a  college  lawn,  it  is  quite 
certain  in  its  ability  to  differentiate  between  Agnes 
and  Egerton  on  the  one  hand  and  Vernon  and  Irene 
on  the  other. 

[162] 


ITS   FIRST  NIGHTS 

This  admirable  sophistication  and  worldiness  ac- 
counts for  the  attitude  of  the  first-nighter  toward 
the  different  grades  of  drama.  For  such  a  situation 
as  marks,  for  example,  the  climax  to  Galsworthy's 
"  The  Mob,"  he  cares  nothing.  To  him,  a  situation 
is  dramatic  chiefly  in  the  degree  that  the  scene  in 
which  it  is  laid  approaches  (i)  a  boudoir,  (2)  the 
door  leading  to  the  boudoir,  or  (3)  Police  Head- 
quarters. To  him,  a  dialogue  is  dramatic  in  pro- 
portion to  the  number  of  times  the  one  character 
issues  to  the  other  a  summary  invitation  to  go  to 
hell.  To  him,  fine  writing  is  anything  in  which  a 
well-tailored  villain,  on  the  point  of  raping  the  he- 
roine, suddenly  releases  her  from  his  embrace,  drops 
his  head  and  observes  that  one  look  into  her  eyes 
has  convinced  him  that  she  is  a  good  woman.  The 
popular  Broadway  play,  the  play  upon  which  the 
first-night  audience  bestows  the  tribute  of  its  ap- 
plause, is  bounded  on  the  north  by  the  belief  that 
authors  always  wear  gold  fountain-pens  clamped  con- 
spicuously to  their  waistcoats,  on  the  south  by  the 
theory  that  a  detective,  even  on  the  hottest  day  in 
summer,  never  wears  any  kind  of  hat  other  than  a 
derby,  on  the  east  by  the  idea  that  manliness  consists 
solely  in  standing  up  as  straight  as  a  poker,  and  on 
the  west  by  the  notion  that  there  is  no  form  of 
habitation  in  the  Riviera  other  than  villas.  The 
popular  Broadway  actor,  the  actor  whom  the  first- 
night  audience  most  loudly  applauds,  is  that  actor 
who  wears  braid  three  inches  wide  on  his  cutaway 
coat,  who  pronounces  the  word  "  valet "  as  if  it 
were  the  noun  designating  the  portion  of  landscape 


THE   POPULAR    THEATRE 

that  lies  between  two  hills,  and  who,  every  summer, 
has  his  photograph  taken  showing  him  sitting  in  his 
bathing  suit  on  the  beach  at  'Sconset  with  his  arm 
around  Mr.  Robert  Milliard. 

The  melodrama  that  wins  the  first-nighter's  en- 
dorsement is  based  on  the  theory  that  the  greatest 
crises  in  men's  lives  must  inevitably  occur  after  sun- 
down. The  farce,  on  the  theory  that  all  young 
women  go  to  bed  half-dressed.  And  the  problem 
play,  on  the  theory  that  when  a  wife  runs  away  with 
another  man,  her  husband  views  the  event  as  a  trag- 
edy. 

I  doubt  seriously  that  one  may  find  anywhere  in 
the  civilized  world  a  collection  of  one  thousand  per- 
sons so  deficient  in  intelligence  as  the  one  thousand 
persons  who  go  to  constitute  the  average  regular 
New  York  first-night  audience.  As  I  write  these 
words,  I  am  thinking  of  one  man,  a  so-called  typical 
regular  first-nighter,  who  may  fairly  be  taken  as  a 
criterion  of  his  first-night  brethren.  This  man  (I 
have  had  a  passing  acquaintance  with  him  for  the 
fourteen  years  of  my  critical  life)  stands  unmistak- 
ably for  the  metropolitan  first-night  audience. 
Know  him,  and  you  know  the  entire  audience. 
Know  his  views  and  his  tastes  and  his  attitudes,  and 
you  know  synchronously  the  views,  tastes  and  atti- 
tudes of  the  nine  hundred  and  ninety-nine  persons 
who  squat  to  his  port  and  starboard.  And  what  the 
nature  of  this  man,  this  symbol  and  index?  Let  us 
see. 

In  the  first  place,  this  man  has  repeatedly  ex- 
pressed the  opinion  that  the  best  play  he  has  ever 


ITS  FIRST  NIGHTS 

seen  was  "  Classmates."  For  the  benefit  of  those 
who,  in  the  turmoil  of  modern  events,  may  have  for- 
gotten this  epic,  it  may  be  mentioned  that  it  was 
employed  some  years  ago  as  a  vehicle  for  Mr.  Rob- 
ert Edeson.  The  forgetful  may  further  be  prodded 
to  memory  by  the  reminder  that  it  was  in  "  Class- 
mates "  that  Mr.  Edeson  got  lost  in  a  dense  jungle 
swamp  and,  when  eventually  discovered  and  rescued, 
was  seen  to  be  wearing  a  pair  of  brand  new  and  spot- 
less patent  leather  boots. 

In  the  second  place,  our  first-night  friend  states, 
with  an  emphasis  not  to  be  mistaken,  that  the  rotten- 
est  (the  word  is  our  friend's)  show  (the  word  is 
also  our  friend's)  he  ever  saw  was  "  The  Thunder- 
bolt "  of  Pinero.  "  Such  stuff,"  he  is  in  the  habit 
of  observing,  "  is  too  gloomy.  It  hasn't  got  enough 
action  in  it,  enough  wallop.  It  may  be  O.  K.  for 
reading  such  things,  but  when  a  man  goes  to  the 
theatre  he  wants  lively  stuff  with  a  punch." 

Thirdly,  our  friend  declares  that,  all  things  con- 
sidered, his  favourite  playwright  was  the  late  Mr. 
Charles  Klein.  No  one,  he  says,  has  in  his  estima- 
tion since  been  able  to  take  the  latter's  place. 
"  There  was  a  fellow,"  says  he,  "  who  knew  how  to 
handle  a  deep  idea  without  boring  you.  His  '  Lion 
and  the  Mouse,'  I'm  willing  to  bet  anything  I  got, 
will  live." 

I  believe  I  have  recorded  enough  about  our  friend 
brilliantly  to  illuminate  the  chambers  of  his  soul. 
Say  what  you  will  about  him,  he  is  an  honest  man 
and  no  hypocrite.  And  his  honestly  expressed  opin- 
ions are  the  deep-seated  opinions  of  his  first-night 


THE   POPULAR    THEATRE 

brothers  who  more  often  posture  themselves  in 
hypocritical  and  specious  attitudes.  These  folk  of 
the  first-nights  are  as  full  of  airs  as  a  cantata,  but 
get  to  the  knuckle  of  them  and  you  will  find  they  re- 
gard any  reference  to  Gatti  Casazza  an  amazingly 
fine  piece  of  wit  and  any  man  who  wears  a  set  of 
false  whiskers  and  walks  with  his  hand  on  his  kidney 
a  great  character  actor. 

To  the  New  York  first-night  audience,  a  piece  of 
music  is  a  good  piece  of  music  in  the  degree  that  there 
figure  in  its  performance  (i)  the  bass  drum,  (2) 
the  snare  drum,  (3)  the  kettle  drum,  (4)  the  sand- 
paper and  (5)  the  xylophone.  Thus,  something 
like  "  Bend  Your  Knees  Like  the  Trees  In  the 
Breeze,  Eloise  "  is  a  finer  work  of  art  than  Brahms' 
scherzo  in  E  flat  minor.  To  the  same  gathering,  a 
play  is  a  piece  of  noble  dramatic  literature  in  pro- 
portion to  the  number  of  policemen  in  it  And  to 
this  audience,  an  actor  is  a  capable  actor  in  the  de- 
gree that  he  is  able  to  cover  up  his  bald  spot.  It 
may  be  described,  may  this  audience,  as  of  the  the- 
atrical school  that  believes  a  burglar  never  enters  a 
house  save  at  night-time,  that  a  butler  always  accom- 
panies a  visitor  to  the  door  of  the  drawing-room 
and  stands  there  at  attention  until  the  visitor  enters, 
that  a  poet  always  looks  funny  in  evening  clothes, 
and  that  no  woman  ever  finally  accepts  a  proposal 
of  marriage  without  first  making  sure  that  she  is 
standing  in  the  exact  centre  of  a  room. 

Among  the  plays  in  later  years  that  the  New  York 
first-night  audience  has  characterized  as  "  rotten  " 
have  been  Brieux's  "The  Affinity"  (Les  Hanne- 
[166] 


tons),  Birmingham's  "General  John  Regan,"  Mol- 
nar's  "  Where  Ignorance  Is  Bliss,"  Ibsen's  "  John 
Gabriel  Borkman,"  Hauptmann's  "  The  Weavers," 
Pinero's  "Wife  Without  a  Smile,"  Chesterton's 
"Magic"  and  Berger's  "The  Deluge."  Among 
the  plays  in  later  years  that  this  same  audience  has 
characterized  as  "  great "  have  been  "  Pollyanna," 
"  Common  Clay,"  "  The  Cinderella  Man,"  "  The 
Man  Who  Came  Back,"  "  The  Warrens  of  Vir- 
ginia," "  Bought  and  Paid  For,"  "  The  House  of 
Glass"  and  "Here  Comes  the  Bride."  It  has 
loudly  applauded  the  score  of  "  The  Girl  from 
Brazil  "  and  has  remained  silent  before  the  score  of 
"  Eva."  It  has  cracked  its  palms  over  Beerbohm 
Tree  in  "  Colonel  Newcome "  and  has  kept  its 
thumbs  in  the  arm-holes  of  its  white  satin  waistcoats 
at  the  performance  of  Faversham  in  "  Othello."  It 
has  discouraged  a  man  like  the  Broadhurst  of  "  Over 
the  'Phone  "  and  encouraged  a  man  like  the  Broad- 
hurst  of  "  Today."  It  has  elevated  the  play  in 
which  the  crook  gets  a  smell  of  a  homemade  plum 
pudding  and  promptly  reforms  over  the  drama  of 
Galsworthy  and  Harold  Brighouse,  the  play  in 
which  the  potwalloper  from  the  red  underwear  belt 
puts  the  Four  Hundred  to  social  rout  over  the  drama 
of  Dunsany  and  Bahr. 

Now,  say  what  you  will,  this  is  no  mean  accom- 
plishment. To  believe  that  this  condition  of  af- 
fairs might  be  brought  about  by  any  group  of  one 
thousand  persons  is  to  believe  what  is  not  true.  The 
thing  requires  a  very  superior  illiteracy,  a  cunning 
ignorance,  a  very  virtuosity  in  tastelessness.  No 

[167] 


THE   POPULAR    THEATRE 

mere  group  of  novices  could  conceivably  succeed  in 
so  brilliant  and  complete  an  inartistic  tour  de  force. 
The  capacity  for  admiring  a  play  like  "  Lilac  Time  " 
more  than  a  play  like  "  The  Three  Daughters  of 
Monsieur  Dupont  "  certainly  does  not  come  to  one 
naturally,  spontaneously.  Such  a  thing  seems  im- 
possible. It  can  come  only  after  a  sedulous,  one 
might  even  say  relentless  and  unswerving,  avoidance 
of  education  and  after  an  assiduous  insensibility  to 
cultural  standards.  The  talent  for  believing  Mi- 
chael Morton  a  greater  dramatist  than  Gerhart 
Hauptmann  calls  for  no  mere  comparative  lack  of 
training:  it  demands  a  thorough  and  encompassing 
lack  of  training,  a  meticulous  inappreciation  of  good 
literature,  a  long  and  faithful  apprenticeship  to  the 
ninth-rate  arts.  And  so  it  is  that  the  first-night  au- 
dience of  Broadway  attains  to  a  nescience  the  mag- 
nitude and  splendour  of  which  dazzle  and  stagger. 
It  is  not  meet  to  dismiss  the  phenomenon  lightly,  care- 
lessly, as  one  might  dismiss  a  small  schoolboy  who 
says  that  two  and  two  make  five.  The  sheer  su- 
perlativeness  of  the  New  York  first-night  audience 
makes  it  an  unmistakably  important  and  valuable 
item  for  laboratory  investigation.  Just  like  sulphur- 
eted  hydrogen. 


C'68] 


Chapter  Thirteen:  Its  Typical  Sea- 
son 

For  the  benefit  of  curious  historians  and  statisti- 
cians of,  let  us  say,  one  hundred  years  from  now  — 
and  by  way  of  placing  on  record  a  typical  American 
theatrical  year  in  the  early  period  of  the  present, 
or  twentieth,  century  —  I  propose  herewith  a  literal 
and  unadorned,  if  fragmentary,  account  of  the  events 
and  philosophies  theatrical  of  the  season  of  1916- 
1917  as  those  manifestations  passed  before  the  vi- 
sion of  one  like  myself,  a  professional  playgoer. 
These  records,  as  I  say,  I  shall  present  in  the  main 
without  criticism.  I  shall  rather  incline  myself 
where  possible  to  the  other  side  and  set  briefly  down 
precisely  what  were  the  gospel  adventures  of  the  eye 
and  the  ear  in  the  popular  theatres  of  New  York  City 
during  the  stipulated  period.  Whether  or  not  my 
impressions  and  experiences  were  the  typical  and 
common  experiences  and  impressions  of  the  less  reg- 
ular playgoer,  I  leave  to  the  latter:  I  believe  they 
were.  And  I  therefore  make  bold  to  hope  that  this 
fractional  record  may  be,  at  some  far  distant  and 
probably  more  cultured  theatrical  day,  of  some  slight 
archeological  interest  and  value. 


THE   POPULAR    THEATRE 

THE   DIARY 

July  31,  igi6.  To  the  Cort  Theatre  to  see  what 
was  announced  as  a  new  and  original  farce-comedy 
by  Mr.  Edward  Clark  named  "  Coat-Tales."  Ar- 
rived twenty  minutes  after  the  curtain  had  risen. 
Discovered  a  minute  later  that  what  I  was  seeing 
was  the  old  and  familiar  Maupassant  fur  coat  conte 
treated  to  a  vaudeville  technique.  Departed. 

August  8,  igi6.  To  the  George  M.  Cohan  The- 
atre to  see  what  was  announced  as  a  new  and  orig- 
inal comedy  by  Mr.  Roi  Cooper  Megrue  named 
*'  Seven  Chances."  At  quarter  of  nine  o'clock  found 
I  was  watching  the  dramatization  of  a  magazine 
story  I  had  read  several  years  before,  a  story  that 
was,  in  turn,  a  revamping  of  Hoyt's  "  A  Black 
Sheep  "  which  I  had  seen  when  I  was  eight  years 
old,  and  of  divers  stage  distillations  I  had  seen  at 
the  respective  ages  of  ten,  eleven,  thirteen  —  I  had 
the  scarlet  fever  when  twelve  and  was  not  taken  to 
the  theatre  that  year  —  fourteen,  fifteen,  eighteen 
—  I  was  abroad  at  sixteen  and  seventeen, —  nine- 
teen and  on  to  thirty-five. 

August  9,  1916.  To  the  Eltinge  Theatre  to  see 
what  was  announced  as  a  new  and  original  play  by 
Mr.  Max  Marcin  called  "  Cheating-  Cheaters." 
Found  at  9  :22  P.  M.  that  I  was  being  made  privy 
once  again  to  the  same  general  type  of  crook  plot 
that  had  seen  service  in  a  play  by  Kate  Jordan  Ver- 
milye  called  "  Secret  Strings,"  which  I  had  seen  sev- 
eral years  before  in  the  Longacre  Theatre,  at  which 
latter  in  turn  I  had  found  at  9:18  P.M.  that  1  was 
[170] 


ITS    TYPICAL  SEASON 

being  made  privy  once  again  to  the  same  general 
type  of  crook  plot  that  had  seen  service  in  an  O. 
Henry  story  called  "  Shearing  the  Wolf." 

August  10,  1916.  To  the  Longacre  to  see  what 
was  announced  as  a  new  and  original  play  by  Otto 
Hauerbach  called  "The  Silent  Witness."  Found 
at  8:34  that  what  I  was  about  to  behold  was  one 
of  the  annual  unloosings  of  the  old  "  Madame  X  " 
plot.  Thereupon  started  reading  Edmond  de  Gon- 
court's  "La  Fille  Elise  "  and  got  to  page  150  be- 
fore the  final  curtain  fell. 

August  14,  1916.  To  the  Lyceum  to  see  "  Please 
Help  Emily,"  by  H.  M.  Harwood,  the  typical  Brit- 
ish idea  of  Frenchy  farce  in  which  a  bachelor,  com- 
ing home  late  at  night,  finds  a  strange  and  very 
pretty  girl  in  his  bed  and  therefore  spends  the  rest 
of  the  night  at  his  club. 

August  75,  1916.  "  Broadway  and  Buttermilk," 
Mr.  Willard  Mack,  Maxine  Elliott  Theatre.  A 
sentimental  document,  interspersed  with  ragtime 
lays,  apotheosizing  the  superior  virtues  of  the  rural 
yokel.  The  author  was  seated  in  a  stage  box,  chew- 
ing gum. 

August  i6t  1916.  To  see  a  mixed  identity  farce 
at  the  Republic  named  "  His  Bridal  Night,"  in  which 
the  vaudeville  Sisters  Dolly  played  the  leading  roles 
and  in  which  the  plot  demanded  that  the  main  male 
mime  be  unable  to  distinguish  one  of  the  sisters,  who 
resembles  Gertrude  Elliott  at  twenty-one,  from  the 
other  sister,  who  resembles  Madame  Janauschek  at 
thirty-four. 

August  77,  19 1 6.     To  the  Astor  to  see  what  was 

[i7'3 


THE   POPULAR    THEATRE 

announced  as  a  new  and  original  play  entitled  "  The 
Guilty  Man,"  by  Ruth  Davis  and  Charles  Klein. 
Found  at  8  143  that  I  was  beholding  Frangois  Cop- 
pee's  "  L'Homme  Culpable  "  and  the  only  local  re- 
vamping of  the  "  Madame  X  "plot  since  the  loth 
inst.  When  Miss  Fenwick  was  not  on  the  stage, 
read  into  J.  K.  Huysmans'  "  Certains." 

August  18,  igid.  To  the  Gaiety  to  see  "  Turn 
to  the  Right,"  by  the  Messrs.  Winchell  Smith  and 
John  Hazzard,  a  play  about  the  wayward  son,  the 
gray-haired  mother,  the  mortgage  on  the  old  farm, 
the  skinflint  deacon  and  the  real  pump. 

August  21,  igid.  To  the  Shubert  to  see  "The 
Happy  Ending,"  by  J.  and  L.  Macpherson.  An  un- 
dergraduate Maeterlinckian  brew  on  the  merry  qual- 
ity of  death.  Heaven  revealed  as  a  platform  cov- 
ered with  grass  cloth,  illuminated  by  two  powerful 
white  bunchlights,  and  peopled  by  some  dozen  or 
more  exceedingly  bad  actors. 

August  22,  igid.  Thirty-ninth  Street  Theatre  — 
a  music  show  entitled  "  Yvette."  Directly  after  the 
opening  chorus  at  8  125,  the  German  dialect  comedian 
came  out,  opened  his  coat,  disclosed  a  loud  red  vest 
and  addressed  a  remark  to  a  fellow  pantaloon  who 
thereupon  struck  with  his  cane  upon  the  comedian's 
right  shin  which  had  a  small  board  attached  to  it 
underneath  the  trousers  and  so  gave  issue  to  a  re- 
sounding crack.  In  bed  at  8  :4y.  My  regularly  as- 
signed seat  in  this  theatre,  J  23,  is  adjacent  to  a 
draughty  exit,  the  Shuberts  thus  evidently  plotting 
toward  my  demise. 

August  26,  jgi6.  Thirty-ninth  Street  Theatre. 
[172] 


A  British  farce  by  W.  W.  Ellis  called  "  A  Little  Bit 
of  Fluff."  A  mid- Victorian  version  of  "  Please  Help 
Emily,"  by  a  writer  who  imagined  that  his  audience 
would  laugh  itself  half  to  death  when  he  caused 
one  of  his  characters  to  peek  through  a  keyhole  and 
caused  another  quickly  to  pull  open  the  door,  thus 
causing  the  first  character  to  sprawl  on  the  floor. 
My  seat  still  adjacent  to  the  draughty  exit,  the  Shu- 
berts  doubtless  planning,  by  making  these  frequent 
changes  of  plays  in  this  theatre,  to  bring  about  fatal 
symptoms  with  dispatch. 

August  28,  igi6.  James  T.  Powers  in  "  Some- 
body's Luggage,"  by  Mark  Swan,  at  the  Forty- 
eighth  Street  Theatre.  The  kind  of  farce  in  which 
a  man  accidentally  gets  hold  of  another  man's  trav- 
eling bag  and  is  therefore  for  the  next  three  months 
mistaken  for  the  latter  by  everyone  including  the 
butler  who  has  been  in  the  service  of  the  real  owner 
of  the  bag  since  childhood.  Mr.  Powers  is  the  sort 
of  comedian  who  believes  that  comedy  consists 
chiefly  in  walking  across  the  stage  at  frequent  inter- 
vals in  the  manner  of  a  man  whose  one  leg  is  consid- 
erably shorter  than  the  other. 

August  29,  igi6.  To  the  Longacre  to  see  what 
was  announced  as  a  new  and  original  farce,  by  the 
Messrs.  Brown,  Lewis  and  Hauerbach,  called  "  A 
Pair  of  Queens."  Found  at  8  145  that  I  was  spec- 
tator at  practically  the  same  crook-detective  farce  I 
had  seen  in  this  same  theatre  the  season  before  — 
then  by  Frederick  Jackson  and  called  "  A  Full 
House." 

August  30,  igi6.     A  music  show  in  the  Forty- 

[173] 


THE   POPULAR    THEATRE 

fourth  Street  Theatre  called  "  The  Girl  from  Bra- 
zil." Chorus  girls'  average  age,  18  years  (B.C.). 

August  31,  1916.  To  the  Hippodrome.  Excel- 
lent amusement  for  persons  who  estimate  everything 
by  size,  and  so  regard  Fatty  Arbuckle's  posterior 
as  of  vastly  greater  importance  than  Gerhart  Haupt- 
mann's  brain. 

September,  I,  igi6.  To  the  Globe  Theatre  to 
see  a  farce  called  "  Fast  and  Grow  Fat,"  by  George 
Broadhurst  —  a  farce  every  bit  as  full  of  laughter 
as  "  Rosmersholm."  Read  L.  Lind-af-Hageby's 
biography  of  Strindberg  and  thereafter  got  as  far  as 
page  47  in  Georges  Pelissier's  "  Le  Mouvement  Lit- 
teraire  Contemporain." 

September  2,  igi6.  To  the  Playhouse.  The 
play,  "  The  Man  Who  Came  Back."  The  author, 
Jules  Eckert  Goodman.  The  plot:  A  dissolute 
young  man  so  insults  a  Barbary  Coast  cabaret  singer 
by  implying  that  she  is  not  virtuous  that  the  young 
woman  becomes  an  opium  fiend  and  an  habituee  of  a 
notorious  dive  in  Shanghai.  She  remains  physically 
pure,  however,  and  once  again  happening  upon  the 
dissolute  young  man  in  the  dive,  marries  him  and 
reforms  him. 

September  4,  igi6.  "The  Flame,"  by  Richard 
Walton  Tully,  Lyric  Theatre.  An  inscrutable  mix- 
ture of  Central  American  politics,  voodooism,  ob- 
stetrics and  cooch  dancing.  At  9:27  gave  it  up  as 
a  too  difficult  job  and  spent  the  balance  of  the  eve- 
ning in  periodic  discreet  peekings  over  my  shoulder 
at  a  great  beauty  enthroned  behind  me. 

September  II,  1916,     To  the  Casino  to  hear  a 

[•74] 


ITS    TYPICAL  SEASON 

music  show  called  "  Flora  Bella."  Observed  on  the 
program  that  one  of  the  characters  was  named 
Prince  Demidoff.  The  allusion  to  the  Prince  as 
Prince  Demi-tasse  occurred  somewhat  later  than 
usual,  at  9:18.  The  libretto  concerned  a  man  who 
failed  to  recognize  his  wife  at  a  masked  ball,  the 
wife  being  completely  disguised  by  a  two-inch  mask 
worn  over  her  eyes. 

September  12,  1916.  To  Edward  Knoblauch's 
"  Paganini  "  at  the  Criterion,  in  which  Mr.  George 
Arliss  succeeded  brilliantly  in  depicting  the  great 
Paganini  as  Mr.  George  Arliss. 

September  1 4,  1916.  "  Nothing  But  the  Truth," 
by  James  Montgomery,  at  the  Longacre.  A  new 
and  original  farce  like  "  The  Naked  Truth,"  by 
George  Paston,  which  was  produced  eight  years  be- 
fore. 

September  19,  1916.  Eleanor  H.  Porter's 
"  Pollyanna,"  dramatized  by  Catherine  Chisholm 
Gushing,  in  the  Hudson.  Philosophy  of  the  play: 
One  should  be  happier  when  one  breaks  a  leg  than 
when  one  loses  a  dollar  bill,  for  where  the  leg  will 
surely,  in  time,  get  well  again,  one  may  never  re- 
cover the  dollar  bill.  Read  Dostoievski's  "  Crime 
and  Punishment." 

September  20,  1916.  W.  Somerset  Maugham's 
"  Caroline  "  at  the  Empire.  Oscar  Wilde  died  No- 
vember 30,  1900.  Verbis  meis  addere  nihil  aude- 
bant  et  super  illos  stillabat  eloquium  meum. —  Job 
xxlx,  22.  R.I.  P. 

September  21,  1916.  To  the  Globe  to  hear  a 
music  show  named  "  The  Amber  Empress."  The 


THE   POPULAR    THEATRE 

libretto  of  the  fortune-hunting  Count,  the  climbing 
American  mother,  the  saucer-eyed  daughter  in  the 
pink  dress  and  carrying  the  pale  blue  parasol,  the 
noble  young  American  in  the  Norfolk  jacket  and 
sport  shirt,  and  the  final  unmasking  of  the  villaino. 
Music  of  the  bass  drum  and  sandpaper  school. 

September  25,  igi6.  "  Miss  Springtime,"  music 
show,  New  Amsterdam  Theatre.  Mr.  Abraham 
Erlanger,  the  manager  of  this  theatre,  believes  Hall 
Caine  to  be  the  greatest  of  living 'literary  artists  and 
his  play,  "  Margaret  Schiller,"  one  of  the  really 
great  dramatic  compositions  of  the  present  time.  I 
don't  Mr.  Abraham  Erlanger  has  accordingly 
punished  my  insularity  by  depriving  me  of  my  seat 
in  his  theatre.  I  did  not,  therefore,  see  "  Miss 
Springtime." 

September  26,  igi6.  Cyril  Harcourt's  "  The  In- 
truder," Cohan  and  Harris  Theatre.  Wife,  hus- 
band, lover.  Husband  finds  out.  Alarums  and  ex- 
cursions. Husband  forgives  wife. 

September  27,  igi6.  To  see  the  Hattons'  "  Up- 
stairs and  Down."  Saw  Hermann  Bahr's  "  Prin- 
ciple "  metamorphosed  into  a  so-called  snappy  story 
—  a  fable  of  baccarat,  bacardi  and  bordello  —  Long 
Island  smart  society  as  seen  from  the  vantage  point 
of  Long  Beach. 

September  28,  1916.  To  the  Fulton.  "  Over 
Night,"  etc.,  etc.,  with  the  back  drop  painted  up  to 
represent  a  Belgian  village  instead  of  the  usual  inn 
up  the  Hudson.  This  time  called  "  Arms  and  the 
Girl." 

October  2,    1916.     To   the   Thirty-ninth   Street 

[176] 


Theatre.  "  Backfire,"  a  Charles  Klein  opus  by 
Stuart  Olivier,  in  which  the  blonde  stenographer 
turns  the  tables,  as  usual,  on  the  millionaire  who 
ruined  her  papa.  The  Shuberts  still  assigning  me 
to  the  seat  next  to  the  draughty  exit.  Their  subtle 
plot  succeeding.  I  catch  a  chill. 

October  3,  1916.  "  Hush,"  an  English  importa- 
tion, at  the  Little  Theatre.  An  attempt  to  shock 
the  yokelry  by  causing  a  young  unmarried  girl  to 
talk  about  having  a  baby  —  it  subsequently  develop- 
ing that  the  young  unmarried  girl  who  talks  about 
having  a  baby  has  written  a  play  about  a  young 
married  girl  who  has  a  baby,  to  which  young  mar- 
ried girl's  baby  the  young  unmarried  girl  has  all 
the  while  really  been  alluding. 

October  4,  igid.  To  the  Maxine  Elliott  to  see 
William  Hodge's  "  Fixing  Sister."  Here,  the  li- 
bretto of  "  The  Amber  Empress  "  presented  without 
chorus  girls  and  ragtime  tunes  and  palmed  off  as 
"  an  American  comedy."  The  Duke  unmasked  and 
in  bad  at  10:40.  I  undressed  and  in  bed  at  9 140. 

October  5,  ig  16.  To  the  Forty-eighth  Street 
Theatre  to  see  George  Broadhurst's  "  Rich  Man, 
Poor  Man,"  still  another  conscription  of  the  Cin- 
derella story.  In  bed  at  10:02  P.  M. 

October  6,  1916.  Harris  Theatre.  A  hokum 
version  of  Galsworthy's  "  Justice  "  by  the  Messrs. 
Megrue  and  Cobb,  in  the  last  act  of  which  Mr. 
George  Nash  and  the  Lee  Lash  scenic  artist  reform 
a  prison. 

October  u,  igi6.  To  the  Garrick  to  "  Le 
Poilu,"  a  patriotic  French  music  show  in  the  French 


THE   POPULAR    THEATRE 

tongue,  financed  by  the  French  Otto  Kahn  and  Lee 
Shubert,  with  music  by  the  French  Sigmund  Romberg 
sung  by  the  French  Belle  Ashlyn,  Pearl  Glover  and 
Zelda  Johnstone,  with  dances  staged  by  the  French 
Jack  Mason,  and  scenery  painted  by  the  French  Au- 
gust Blumendorf. 

October  14,  1916.  To  the  motion  picture  "  In- 
tolerance "  at  the  Liberty.  This  picture,  widely  an- 
nounced as  the  cinema's  chef-d'oeuvre,  consisted 
largely,  during  the  time  I  remained  in  the  theatre, 
of  showings  upon  the  screen  of  cuties  and  quotations 
from  the  Encyclopedia  Britannica.  I  entertain  no 
personal,  or  critical,  objection  to  either  cuties  or 
the  Encyclopedia  Britannica.  But  I  don't  fancy 
them  together. 

October  23,  1916.  To  the  George  M.  Cohan 
Theatre  to  see  "  She  Stoops  to  Conquer  "  in  sub- 
Mason  and  Dixon  dialect.  Title,  "  Come  Out  of 
the  Kitchen."  The  Goldsmith,  Mr.  A.  E. 
Thomas. 

October  28,  1916.  To  the  Criterion  to  view 
Mr.  John  Drew  in  sideburns  entitled  "  Major 
Pendennis."  Author  of  the  sideburns,  Mr.  Lang- 
don  Mitchell.  Inspiration  of  the  sideburns,  the 
Thackeray  novel. 

October  30,  1916.  Empire  Theatre.  Scene: 
"  A  hall  in  Cheviot  Castle,  Northumberland. 
Night."  The  hero  overhears  the  whispered  conver- 
sation of  the  villain  and  Mrs.  Radford  and  thwarts 
their  plot.  Scene:  "The  same.  Thirty-eight 
hours  later.  Early  afternoon."  The  hero  marries 
Diana,  the  erstwhile  fiancee  of  the  villain,  whom  he 

[178] 


ITS    TYPICAL  SEASON 

has  loved  from  that  day  —  you  remember,  sweet- 
heart —  the  sky  was  blue  and  the  birds,  etc.,  etc. 
Title,  "  The  Basker."  Author,  Clifford  Mills. 

October  31,  1916.  To  Clare  Rummer's  "Good 
Gracious  Annabelle  "  in  the  Republic  Theatre.  A 
civilized  farce  and  an  amusing  evening. 

November  2,  1916.  "  Old  Lady  31,"  a  delight- 
ful sentimental  comedy  of  old  age  by  Rachel  Croth- 
ers  and  Louise  Forsslund.  Thirty-ninth  Street 
Theatre.  The  Shuberts  still  assigning  me  to  the 
seat  adjoining  the  draughty  exit.  Their  plot  mak- 
ing excellent  headway.  I  get  an  attack  of  tonsilitis. 

November  6,  1916.  To  the  Booth  to  see  a  per- 
formance of  Shaw's  "  Getting  Married,"  a  play  to 
be  acted  in  the  theatre  in  the  same  sense  that  Mrs. 
Rorer's  Cook  Book  is  a  book  to  be  read  in  the 
library. 

November  13,  1916.  To  the  Washington  Square 
Players'  new  bill  of  one-act  plays,  not  one  of  which 
showed  an  artist  going  to  sleep  and  dreaming  that 
his  painting  of  a  beautiful  girl  had  come  to  life. 

November  14,  1916.  To  see  Rida  Johnson 
Young's  farce,  "  Captain  Kidd,  Jr.,"  a  Christian  Sci- 
ence version  of  "  Treasure  Island."  The  central 
comic  figure  of  the  manuscript,  a  country  constable 
who  periodically  flicked  up  the  bottom  of  his  vest  and 
disclosed  his  badge  of  office  secreted  on  his  abdomen. 

November  15,  1916.  To  the  Neighbourhood 
Playhouse  to  see  a  bill  of  Shaw  and  Dunsany  short 
plays.  A  genuinely  satisfying  evening.  My  com- 
panion, Mr.  Robert  H.  Davis,  forced  to  admit  that 
Shaw  is  almost  as  amusing  as  Irvin  Cobb. 

[179] 


THE   POPULAR    THEATRE 

November  18,  1916.  To  the  Harris  Theatre  to 
see  Margaret  Illington  in  the  leading  role  of  Hop- 
wood's  deft  naughty  farce,  "  Our  Little  Wife," 
which  the  majority  of  my  colleagues  condemned  on 
the  moral  ground  that  only  young  girls  weighing 
under  one  hundred  and  two  pounds  should  be  cast 
for  objectionable  roles. 

November  25,  igid.  A  woman  writes  a  sensa- 
tionally successful  novel.  She  keeps  the  news  from 
her  husband!  Title,  "  Such  Is  Life."  Princess 
Theatre. 

November  27,  1916.  To  view  J.  Hartley  Man- 
ners' drama,  "  The  Harp  of  Life."  Theme :  A 
young  man's  mother  desires  above  all  things  that  her 
son  shall  grow  up  to  respect  all  women.  The  young 
man  falls  deeply  in  love  with  a  woman  and  plans  to 
make  her  his  wife.  His  mother  reveals  to  the 
young  man  the  fact  that  the  woman  he  loves  is  a 
common  prostitute.  The  young  man  therefore 
grows  up  to  respect  all  women. 

November  28,  1916.  A  good-for-nothing  young 
city  fellow  goes  to  the  country.  He  meets  a  coun- 
try girl.  She  reforms  him.  He  invents  a  machine 
which  he  sells  to  the  Trust  for  $500,000  and  they 
live  happily  ever  afterward.  Title,  "  Mile-a-Min- 
ute  Kendall."  Creator,  Owen  Davis.  Place,  Ly- 
ceum Theatre. 

November  29,  1916.  To  a  Casino  music  show 
called  "  Follow  Me."  At  9 :02  p.  M.  Miss  Anna 
Held  came  out  and  proceeded  to  confide  to  the  au- 
dience that  her  eyes  were  of  an  exceptionally  passion- 
ate quality.  Inasmuch  as  I  had  been  privileged  the 


ITS   TYPICAL  SEASON 

same  confidence  by  the  lady  back  in  Evans  and 
Hoey's  "Parlor  Match"  in  1898  or  thereabout,  I 
failed  to  consider  the  confession  news  and  went 
across  the  street  to  the  Opera  House. 

December  4,  igi6.  To  the  Empire  to  see  Sarah 
Bernhardt.  Rosemary  in  mothballs.  .  .  .  Love  let- 
ters in  the  hands  of  the  prosecuting  attorney.  .  .  . 
"  Auld  Lang  Syne  "  by  a  Jazz  band  at  3  A.  M.  .  .  . 
Grandmother  reading  an  Elsie  book. 

December  5,  ig  16.  To  the  Fulton  to  see  Arnold 
Daly  in  Bahr's  "  The  Master."  A  good  play  well 
acted. 

December  6,  1916.  To  the  Astor  to  see  a  music 
show  named  "Her  Soldier  Boy."  Plot  of  book: 
He  wasn't  killed  after  all,  but  only  wounded.  Plot 
of  jokes :  u  As  you  say  in  America,  bah  Jove,  '  I've 
got  your  numeral !  ' 

December  7,  igid.  A  middle-aged  man  falls  in 
love  with  his  ward.  He  hesitates  to  declare  his 
passion.  He  declares  his  passion.  The  ward  says 
she  has  loved  him  all  the  time.  Title,  "  Margery 
Daw."  Author,  George  Parker.  Place,  Princess 
Theatre. 

December  22,  igi6.  To  Mr.  Belasco's  theatre 
to  see  "  Little  Lady  in  Blue,"  a  conventional  vehicle 
for  a  star  actress  possessed  of  all  the  conventional 
component  parts  of  such  a  vehicle  save  wheels. 
Thesis:  Wayward  fellow,  sweet  soubrette,  reform 
and  matrimony. 

December  25,  igi6.  To  the  Empire  to  view 
Barrie's  "  A  Kiss  for  Cinderella,"  regarding  which 
my  confrere,  M.  Clayton  Hamilton,  his  nose  a  deep 

[181] 


THE   POPULAR    THEATRE 

maroon  from  unrestrained  weeping,  piped  this  af- 
fecting chanson: 

"  If  millions  and  millions  of  lilies-of-the-valley  were 
miraculously  turned  to  silver  and  simultaneously  shaken, 
there  would  arise  a  light  and  laughing  music  in  the  world 
—  a  music  so  delicate  that  it  would  be  inaudible  to  ears  that 
cannot  hear.  First  of  all,  the  infant  children,  too  soft  as 
yet  to  sit  up  and  take  notice  of  anything  but  light  and  sound, 
would  turn  their  tiny  heads  upon  their  necks  and  smile  as  if 
in  memory  of  a  noble  thought,  heard  somewhere  long  ago. 
Next,  the  Little  People,  whose  other  name  is  Fairies  and  who 
live  forever  in  the  minds  of  those  who  cannot  quite  forget, 
would  troop  out  under  leaves  and  petals,  and  join  their  hands 
and  dance  around  in  rings.  And  high,  high  up  beyond  the 
treetops,  the  ever-circling  stars  would  sing  as  once  they  sang 
upon  the  primal  morning,  ere  yet  the  universe  grew  old. 
And  everywhere  beneath  the  circling  and  the  singing  of  the 
stars,  the  Tall  People,  whose  other  name  is  Poets,  would 
listen  and  would  softly  smile  and  exquisitely  weep.  If  you 
have  tears,  by  all  means  go  and  shed  them  as  a  sort  of  ex- 
quisite libation  to  the  latest  masterpiece  of  Sir  James  Mat- 
thew Barrie,  Baronet  (for  services  to  humankind)  ;  but,  if 
you  have  not  tears,  by  all  means  stay  away  and  make  room 
for  the  rest  of  us  who  want  to  blow  a  kiss  to  Cinderella." 

Since  the  play  seems  to  the  present  somewhat  less 
impressionable  writer  to  be  a  work  considerably  in- 
ferior to  Miss  Eleanor  Gates'  "  Poor  Little  Rich 
Girl,"  and  more  greatly  inferior  still  to  Barrie's 
previous  plays,  he  has  decided  to  stay  away,  as  re- 
quested, and  allow  the  moist  M.  Hamilton  this  ex- 
tra room  wherein  to  blow  kisses. 

December  26,   !Ql6.     To  the  Hudson.     "  The 

[182] 


ITS    TYPICAL   SEASON 

Lion  and  the  Mouse,"  Vol.  II,  No.  136.  Title, 
"  Shirley  Kaye."  Rewriter,  Hulbert  Footner. 

December  27,  1916.  To  Stuart  Walker's  Port- 
manteau Theatre  and  the  admirable  plays  of  Dun- 
sany.  The  finest  things  of  the  season.  An  eve- 
ning to  the  taste  of  such  persons  as  fail  to  enthuse 
over  dramas  in  which  an  old  negro  woman  goes 
crazy  because  her  newly  born  niece  is  disclosed  to 
have  a  taint  of  white  blood. 

January  I,  1917,  matinee.  At  the  Maxine  Elliott 
a  play  by  Mrs.  May  Martindale  called  "  Gamblers 
All,"  an  echo  of  such  contes  of  the  yesteryear  as  "  A 
Woman's  Atonement,  or  A  Mother's  Mistake,"  by 
Adah  M.  Howard,  and  "  Leslie's  Loyalty,  or  His 
Love  So  True,"  by  Charles  Garvice. 

January  i}  1917,  evening.  To  the  Criterion  to 
see  "  Seremonda,"  by  William  Lindsey,  a  romantic 
drama  of  the  species  in  which  the  barbaric  Raimon, 
waving  aside  Barral,  Amfos,  Timon,  Ugo,  Ermen- 
garda,  Vidal  and  Gondolfo,  runs  the  lover  Guilhem 
through  the  gizzard  with  his  trusty  blade  and  grasps 
the  coveted  and  swooning  Julia  Arthur  to  his  brawny 
bosom. 

January  6,  1917.  To  the  Maxine  Elliott  to  see 
"  The  Lodger,"  the  play  in  which  the  timid  and  very 
gentle  comedian  is  mistaken  for  a  bloodthirsty  crim- 
inal. Mimeographer,  Horace  Vachell. 

January  8,  1917.  To  the  Lyceum  to  see  a  revival 
of  A.  E.  Thomas'  "  Her  Husband's  Wife,"  a  tenu- 
ous but  adroit  comedy  in  which,  on  this  occasion,  the 
comedy  rested  chiefly  in  the  spectacle  of  Mr.  Henry 
Kolker  playing  a  modish  beau  in  a  pair  of  trousers 


THE   POPULAR    THEATRE 

that  would  have  been  two  feet  too  long  for  De 
Wolf  Hopper. 

January  10,  1917.  Princess  Theatre.  "  'Cep- 
tion  Shoals,"  by  H.  Austin  Adams,  the  play  about 
the  young  girl  who  is  brought  up  on  the  isolated 
island,  believes  that  babies  are  the  result  of  shaking 
hands  and  then,  on  her  eighteenth  birthday,  meets 
the  leading  man  in  the  shirt  open  at  the  neck. 

January  n,  1917-  Fulton  Theatre.  "  In  for 
the  Night,"  by  James  Savery,  the  farce  about  the 
couple  who  are  mistaken  by  the  hotel  clerk  for  man 
and  wife  and  assigned  to  the  same  bedroom  as  the 
curtain  falls  on  the  second  act,  the  curtain  rising 
on  the  third  act  (time:  next  morning)  and  disclosing 
the  man  asleep  in  the  armchair  downstairs. 

January  75,  1917.  To  a  music  show  hight  "  Love 
o'  Mike,"  Shubert  Theatre.  The  kind  of  enter- 
tainment presented  annually  by  the  University  of 
Missoula  Falseface  Club.  A  so-called  smart  air 
imparted  to  the  proceedings  through  periodic  ejacu- 
lations of  such  phrases  as  "  top  hole  "  and  "  bally 
bounder." 

February  I,  1917.  To  see  what  was  announced 
as  an  inspiring  Biblical  play  in  the  Manhattan  Opera 
House.  Title,  "  The  Wanderer."  Plot:  A  bad 
boy  leaves  his  home  in  ancient  Hebron  in  order  to 
see  the  Russian  Ballet  which  is  showing  in  Babylon. 
At  the  performance  he  falls  for  a  cocotte  who  robs 
him  and  then  throws  him  over  for  a  sailor.  He 
returns  to  his  home  town  and  marries  his  country 
girl  sweetheart. 

February  5,  /p/7-     To  the  Booth  to  view  Clare 


ITS    TYPICAL   SEASON 

Kummer's  "  A  Successful  Calamity."  Plot :  A  rich 
man,  whose  wife  drags  him  nightly  to  ulterior  func- 
tions, longs  to  spend  one  quiet  evening  at  home.  To 
this  end,  he  tells  his  wife  he  has  lost  all  his  money. 
His  longing  to  enjoy  a  quiet  evening  at  home  there- 
upon at  length  vouchsafed  him,  he  discovers  that 
the  end  of  the  first  act  needs  an  effective  "  curtain  " 
and  promptly  goes  off  to  a  prize-fight.  But  a  beau- 
tifully produced  and  excellently  acted  play. 

February  6,  ig 77.  To  Miss  Jane  Cowl's  "  Lilac 
Time,"  the  kind  of  war  play  in  which  all  the  sol- 
diers have  their  hair  slicked  down  with  pomade  and 
in  which  the  poor  French  peasant  girl  has  her  mouth 
rouged  into  a  little  Cupid's  bow. 

February  7,  igij.  An  old  California  gentleman 
goes  to  sleep.  He  dreams  that  his  Japanese  butler, 
accompanied  by  the  Japanese  butlers  of  three  of  his 
neighbours,  invades  unsuspecting  America  and  cap- 
tures the  whole  Pacific  coast.  He  wakes  up  and 
calls  on  the  audience  to  accept  his  vision  as  a  warn- 
ing. Title,  "If."  Creative  Brain,  Mr.  Mark 
Swan. 

February  g,  1917-  To  the  Morosco  Theatre  to 
see  "  Canary  Cottage,"  the  kind  of  music  show  in 
which  a  comedian  named  Asbestos  Hicks  explains 
that  his  parents  named  him  Asbestos  because  he  was 
such  a  warm  baby. 

February  10,  igij.  Little  Theatre.  "  The 
Morris  Dance."  8  130  p.  M.,  Mr.  Winthrop  Ames 
believes  Granville  Barker  to  be  a  great  man.  8  150 
P.M.,  a  misgiving  seizes  Mr.  Ames.  9:20  P.M., 
Mr.  Ames  calls  for  spirits  of  ammonia.  9 136  P.  M., 


Mr.  Ames  observed  in  lobby  passing  Mr.  Barker 
without  bowing. 

February  12,  1917.  To  the  Maxine  Elliott  to 
see  Chesterton's  charming  and  unusual  play, 
"Magic,"  sadly  filtered  through  a  i82-pound  Pa- 
tricia, a  Stranger  with  a  voice  like  the  late  Ezra 
Kendall's,  and  a  misty  plantation  that  took  a  period 
of  time  ample  for  the  leisurely  palating  of  five  beers 
at  the  Kaiserhof  bar  next  door  wherein  to  fade  into 
the  drawing-room  of  the  Duke. 

February  13,  1917.  Criterion  Theatre.  The  un- 
polished American  with  the  heart  of  gold  unmasks 
the  Duke  who  is  wooing  the  young  heiress  and  mar- 
ries the  latter.  Title,  "  Johnny  Get  Your  Gun." 
Cerebrum,  E.  L.  Burke. 

February  14,  1917.  To  the  Washington  Square 
Players'  new  program  of  one-act  plays.  A  but 
moderately  interesting  bill  marred  by  Maeterlinck's 
wearying  asthma,  "  The  Death  of  Tintagiles." 
Still  no  sign  of  a  one-act  play  dealing  with  an  actress 
who,  while  waiting  for  her  train  at  a  jerk-water 
junction,  patches  up  a  quarrel  between  a  stage-struck 
country  lass  and  her  farmer-boy  lover. 

February  19,  1917-  To  the  Princess  to  see  the 
Bolton-Wodehouse  music  show  "  Oh  Boy."  Two 
pretty  girls.  Therefore  exceptionally  good  enter- 
tainment. 

February  26,  1917.  Fulton  Theatre.  Damon 
and  Pythias  in  hobo  make-up.  Much,  fervent  hand- 
shaking, old-man-ing,  God-bless-you-Jack-ing,  slap- 
ping-on-the-back,  etc.  Title,  "  Pals  First." 

February  27,  1917.  To  see  a  revival  of  Barrie's 
[i  86] 


ITS    TYPICAL  SEASON 

originally  warming  "  Professor's  Love  Story." 
Like  reading  a  woman's  love  letters  fifteen  years 
after  you've  married  her. 

March  5,  1917.  To  the  Garrick  to  see  E.  H. 
Sothern's  play  "  Stranger  Than  Fiction."  Mr. 
Sothern's  idea  of  satire  provides  an  admirable  satire 
of  Mr.  Sothern.  Home  and  in  bed  before  the 
entr'acte  orchestra  had  got  to  Dvorak's  "  Humor- 
eske." 

March  6,  1917.  To  "  The  Willow  Tree,"  by 
Rhodes  and  Benrimo.  "  Madam  Butterfly  "  on  a 
xylophone.  .  .  .  Reading  aloud  the  fable  of  Gala- 
tea in  Vantine's.  .  .  .  Moonlight  on  a  dish  of  chop 
suey. 

March  7,  1917.  To  the  Harris  to  see  a  play 
called  "  The  Brat."  A  street  urchin  is  brought  into 
the  home  of  a  well-to-do  family,  captures  the  house- 
hold with  her  great  wit,  reforms  the  dissolute  son 
of  the  house  and  marries  him.  Author,  Maude  Ful- 
ton. 

March  12,  1917.  To  Somerset  Maugham's 
"  Our  Betters,"  at  the  Hudson.  Wedekind  with  a 
monocle.  ...  A  young  girl  reading  the  Police  Ga- 
zette hidden  between  the  covers  of  Town  Topics. 
.  .  .  The  ghost  of  Clyde  Fitch  having  tea  with  the 
ghost  of  Josie  Mansfield. 

March  19,  1917.  To  the  Thirty-ninth  Street 
Theatre  to  see  Galsworthy's  "  The  Fugitive,"  an 
1895  triangle  play  into  which  Galsworthy  has  in- 
serted a  couple  of  speeches  on  the  British  divorce 
laws  of  1915  and  so  persuaded  most  of  the  New 
York  reviewers  that  his  play  is  "  a  vigorous,  up-to- 


THE   POPULAR    THEATRE 

the-moment  indictment  of  the  inequality  of  a  wife's 
position  in  the  English  divorce  courts."  The  Shu- 
berts  still  placing  me  next  to  the  draughty  exit  in 
Row  J,  and  their  plot  against  me  getting  on  fa- 
mously. I  catch  the  lumbago  and  have  to  see  a 
doctor. 

March  20,  1917.  To  hear  the  musical  comedy 
"  Eileen,"  in  which  Victor  Herbert  shows  Reginald 
DeKoven  how  he  should  have  written  "  The  High- 
wayman." 

March  22,  1917.  To  the  Bandbox  to  see  the 
Urban-Ordynski  futurist  production  of  Ossip  Dy- 
mov's  play  "  Nju."  Galsworthy's  "  Fugitive  "  in 
motion-picture  scenario  form,  with  scenery  and  light- 
ing effects  by  the  President  of  Liberia. 

March  26,  1917.  To  the  Lyceum  to  see  Vachell's 
"  Case  of  Lady  Camber,"  the  play  about  the  phial 
of  poison,  the  suspicion  attaching  to  the  pretty  nurse, 
the  examination  of  the  phial,  the  finding  that  the 
cork  has  not  been  pulled  and  the  exoneration  of  the 
Nightingale.  See  "  Audrey's  Recompense,  or  How 
Her  Honour  Was  Spared,"  by  Mrs.  Georgie  Shel- 
don and  "  Her  Fatal  Move,  or  Cleared  at  Last," 
by  Mrs.  Alex.  McVeigh  Miller. 

March  28,  1917.  To  the  new  one-act  plays  of 
the  Washington  Square  Players.  Not  one  of  the 
one-act  plays,  alas,  contained  the  fine  dramatic  situ- 
ation of  the  husband  who  returns  unexpectedly  and 
finds  his  wife  in  her  lover's  arms,  only  to  be  dis- 
armed by  the  assurance  of  the  latter,  a  playwright, 
that  the  wife  and  he  were  merely  rehearsing  a  scene 
from  his  new  play. 

[.88] 


ITS    TYPICAL  SEASON 

April  7,  1917.  To  the  Garrick  to  a  play  called 
"  Grasshopper."  A  play  of  German  peasant  life 
adapted  into  a  play  of  Irish  peasant  life.  Chauncey 
Olcott  in  "  The  Weavers."  .  .  .  Emanuel  Reicher 
in  "  The  Heart  of  Paddy  Whack."  Original  au- 
thor, von  Keyserling. 

April  9,  1917-  The  several  friends  of  a  young 
man  given  to  excessive  bibbing  try  to  prove  to  him 
that  his  indulgence  in  alcohol  is  ruining  his  mind, 
his  health  and  his  career.  The  young  man,  in  turn, 
disproves  each  and  every  one  of  their  arguments. 
In  view  of  which,  and  by  virtue  of  the  further  fact 
that  the  young  man's  robust  father  who  has  never 
touched  a  drink  in  his  life  falls  dead  at  the  mere 
spectacle  of  the  young  man  drinking  a  small  pony 
of  brandy,  the  play  is  called  a  strong  argument  in 
favour  of  prohibition.  Title  of  play,  "  The  Very 
Minute."  The  Brieux  of  the  occasion,  Mr.  John 
Meehan.  Place,  Belasco  Theatre. 

April  iot  1917.  To  the  New  Amsterdam,  by  spe- 
cial dispensation,  to  hear  the  talented  Max  Beer- 
bohm's  lesser  brother  Herbert's  most  recent  curtain 
speech  assuring  Americans  how  much  he  loves  them 
(at  $2.50  a  head)  and  his  enactment,  en  passant, 
of  a  Michael  Morton  version  of  "  The  Newcomes." 
Thackeray  in  terms  of  the  Union  Dime  Savings 
Bank. 

April  12,  1917.  A  pure  Southern  girl  is  abducted 
and  deflowered  by  a  white  slaver.  Her  fiance,  a 
physician,  catches  the  white  slaver  after  prowling 
around  a  dark  stage  for  fifteen  minutes  with  a 
pocket  flashlight  and  shouts  that  he  will  avenge  his 


THE   POPULAR    THEATRE 

beloved's  honour  by  inoculating  the  white  slaver 
with  various  experimental  toxins.  Title,  "  The 
Knife."  Author,  Eugene  Walter.  Place,  Bijou 
Theatre. 

April  13,  1917.  To  the  Provincetown  Players' 
one-act  plays.  Wit  in  place  of  the  comique  with  the 
target  sewed  to  the  seat  of  his  trousers,  and  an 
observation  of  life  in  place  of  the  usual  observation 
of  the  predilections  and  tastes  of  vaudeville  audi- 
ences. 

April  14,  1917-  To  Ridgely  Torrence's  negro 
plays  at  the  Garden  Theatre.  Padraic  Colum  in 
black  face.  An  interesting  beginning,  at  least. 

April  18,  1917.  Republic  Theatre.  A  drama- 
tization of  Du  Maurier's  "  Peter  Ibbetson,"  with  re- 
calcitrant trick  scenery  and  a  2OO-pound  little  Mim- 
sey  interposed  between  the  manuscript  and  the  im- 
agination. My  confrere  Hamilton,  deeply  touched, 
again  composes  a  chanson  on  lilies  of  the  valley,  soft 
little  babies,  dancing  dandelions  and  laughing  little 
stars. 

April  23,  1917-  Went  to  the  Forty-fourth  Street 
Theatre  and  watched  Mr.  Robert  B.  Mantell  give  his 
celebrated  performance  of  the  role  of  Macbeth  in 
his  presentation  of  Shakespeare's  "  Merchant  of 
Venice." 

April  27,  1917.  To  the  "  Midnight  Frolic  "  on 
the  New,  Amsterdam  Theatre  roof-  I  drank  two 
cocktails,  three  glasses  of  sherry,  a  quart  of  cham- 
pagne and  several  ponies  of  Cointreau.  The  show 
seemed  to  get  better  and  better  as  it  went  along. 

April  30,  1917-     To  the  Astor  to  see  a  music 


ITS   TYPICAL  SEASON 

show  called  "  His  Little  Widows,"  the  plot  of  which 
requests  one  to  imagine  that  all  the  girls  on  the 
stage  are  wild  to  marry  Mr.  Carter  De  Haven. 

May  14,  1917.  To  the  Empire  to  see  three  one- 
act  plays  by  J.  M.  Barrie.  The  first,  "  The  New 
Word,"  the  war  in  terms  of  Barrie.  The  second, 
41  Old  Friends,"  dipsomania  in  terms  of  Macdonald 
Hastings.  The  third,  "  The  Old  Lady  Shows  Her 
Medals,"  the  war  in  terms  of  Gertrude  Jennings. 

May  75,  igiT>     To  the  Glen  Springs  Sanatorium. 


[190 


Chapter  Fourteen:   Its    "Big 
Time'    Vaudeville 

Vaudeville  may  be  described  as  a  form  of  theatrical 
entertainment  devised  for  the  delectation  of  admirers 
of  green  plush  Alpine  hats,  detective  stories  in 
which  it  is  finally  revealed  that  the  man  was  mur- 
dered by  an  East  Indian  chimpanzee  belonging  to 
the  Mahatma  from  the  eye  of  whose  idol  the  sacred 
rhinestone  had  been  pilfered,  scarf-pins  in  the  form 
of  question  marks,  reproductions  of  paintings  show- 
ing a  man  kneeling  tenderly  beside  an  ornate  bed 
and  kissing  the  hand  of  his  wife  who  has  recently 
vouchsafed  him  a  baby,  and  reversible  undershirts. 
It  is  made  up,  for  the  most  part,  of  young  men  whose 
coat-pockets  are  cut  on  a  slant  of  ninety  degrees  and 
embellished  with  flaps  fashioned  in  the  shape  of 
W's,  and  of  young  women  whose  speaking  voices  re- 
semble that  of  Galli-Curci's  cab-starter.  It  is  the 
profession  of  these  young  women  to  rush  out  onto 
the  stage  carrying  suit-cases,  bump  violently  into  the 
aforementioned  young  men  and  ejaculate  "  Mon 
Doo!  Quelque  chose  est  ici,"  and  the  profession 
of  the  young  men  thereupon  to  observe  "  Ah,  a  na- 
tive of  Passaic!  " 

In  addition  to  these  young  men  and  women,  vaude- 
ville contains  all  the  old  actors  in  the  world  who 
[192] 


ITS   VAUDEVILLE 

are  out  of  work  and  whose  specialty  on  the  so-called 
legitimate  stage  was  playing  the  role  of  the  police 
captain,  to  say  nothing  of  all  the  vintage  coloratura 
sopranos  who  have  had  fights  with  Mr.  Charles  Dil- 
lingham  and  the  Shuberts  because  the  latter  assigned 
them  to  dressing-rooms  one  flight  up.  Each  of  the 
old  police  captain  actors  appears  in  a  sketch  in  which 
his  burglar  son  breaks  by  night  into  an  apartment 
not  knowing  that  the  apartment  is  that  of  his  own 
father,  and  each  of  the  vintage  coloraturas  winds  up 
on  the  last  note  of  all  her  songs  by  shaking  herself 
like  a  wet  dog  and  suddenly  throwing  open  her  arms 
like  the  angel  on  the  wire  in  the  "  Uncle  Tom's 
Cabin  "  transformation  scene. 

Besides  the  sketch  in  which  the  police  captain 
actors  appear,  a  great  favourite  in  vaudeville  is  the 
sketch  in  which  the  wife  pleads  with  her  husband  to 
give  up  something  or  other  since,  in  the  months  he 
has  been  away,  a  condition  has  arisen  that  will  shortly 
make  him  a  father.  Another  sketch  close  to  the 
hearts  of  vaudeville  audiences  is  the  one  played  in 
front  of  a  back-drop  on  which  are  painted  two  cherry 
trees  in  bloom  and  the  peak  of  Fujiyama.  In  this 
sketch,  some  Broadway  ingenue  out  of  a  job  appears 
as  the  young  daughter  of  a  Japanese  nobleman. 
The  young  daughter,  so  goes  the  sketch,  has  been 
educated  at  Eton  and  upon  returning  to  her  native 
Yokohama  is  followed  by  young  Roderick  Trevor 
who  loves  her  madly  and  who  has  come  hither  to 
ask  her  father  for  her  hand  in  marriage.  Pink 
Arbutus,  as  the  daughter  is  called,  breaks  the  news 
to  her  honourable  father  in  the  honourable  garden 

[193] 


THE   POPULAR    THEATRE 

of  their  honourable  pagoda.  Her  stoical  father  re- 
fuses his  consent  and  tells  Pink  Arbutus  a  fable  in 
which  is  recounted  the  fate  of  poor  little  Princess 
Chu  Chu  Karr  who,  too,  unwisely  loved  a  foreigner. 
After  Pink  Arbutus'  father  leaves,  Roderick  vaults 
over  the  garden  wall  and  breathes  his  love  into 
little  Pink  Arbutus'  ear.  As  the  sweet  amour  is  in 
progress,  a  couple  of  Pink  Arbutus'  father's  myrmi- 
dons goose-step  up  behind  Roderick,  pinion  his  arms 
behind  him  and,  despite  little  Pink  Arbutus'  ulula- 
tions,  carry  him  into  the  pagoda. 

Enters  now  again  the  father  who  is  determined  to 
press  Pink  Arbutus  to  his  stern  will.  But  no  sooner 
has  he  seized  the  little  one's  wrists  than  rushes  on 
Roderick's  mother,  who  has  followed  her  son  to 
Japan  on  the  same  mail  packet. 

"  Pray  God,  I  am  not  too  late  I  "  she  cries. 

"  For  what,  honourable  English  lady?  "  bids  Pink 
Arbutus  pere,  in  an  O'Sullivan  rubber  heel  voice. 

"  To  prevent  my  son's  union  with  an  Oriental !  " 
she  sneers. 

This  remark  makes  Pink  Arbutus  pere  jolly  good 
and  sore.  But  the  denouement  comes  when,  moved 
to  compassion,  he  confesses  that  Pink  Arbutus  is  not 
of  his  own  flesh  and  blood,  but  merely  his  adopted 
child,  her  parents,  none- other  than  Lord  and  Lady 
Spencer  Warwick,  having  been  slain  in  the  Boxer 
rebellion. 

Still  another  greatly  admired  sketch  may  be  de- 
scribed thus : 

[I94J 


ITS   VAUDEVILLE 

SCENE  :     The  home  of  John  D.  Morgan, 
a  millionaire. 

9  p.  M. —  Curtain  rises  disclosing  a  room  with  green 
walls,  purple  velvet  portieres,  red  upholstered 
chairs,  a  bird's-eye  maple  piano,  and  a  gilt  centre 
table  with  a  small  orange-shaded  lamp. 

9:01  p.  M. —  Enter  burglar  who  stealthily  turns  out 
the  light  in  the  small  lamp  and  then  prowls  around 
with  a  pocket  flash  that  makes  twice  as  much  light. 

9 :03  p.  M. —  Loud  footsteps  heard.  Burglar  hides 
in  closet  at  L  2.  The  small  lamp  is  flashed  on 
and  audience  sees  another  burglar  who  then  again 
cautiously  turns  out  the  lamp  and  prowls  around 
with  a  doubly  powerful  pocket  flashlight. 

9  .-05  p.  M. —  Noise  heard  at  window.  Burglar  hides 
in  closet  at  R  2.  The  small  lamp  is  flashed  on 
and  the  audience  sees  another  burglar  who  warily 
turns  out  the  lamp  once  again  and  prowls  around 
with  an  almost  blinding  pocket  flashlight. 

9  :o8  P.  M. —  Sound  of  someone  coming.  Burglar 
hides  under  table  C.  The  small  lamp  is  flashed 
on  and  audience  sees  a  girl  in  a  salmon-pink  dress 
and  pale  blue  stockings  and  slippers  who  turns 
out  the  lamp  and  presently  screams.  The  audi- 
ence hears  sounds  of  a  gigantic  struggle  on  the 
darkened  stage. 

9:12  P.M. —  Sound  of  the  door  being  battered  in. 

[195] 


THE   POPULAR    THEATRE 

Also,  though  there  was  no  glass  in  the  door,  a 
great  noise  of  shattered  glass. 

9:13  P.  M.  —  The  small  lamp  is  turned  up  again. 


9  :i3J^2  P.  M.  —  The  audience  beholds  two  policemen 
covering  the  three  burglars  with  revolvers  while 
the  girl  stands  crouched  beside  the  piano. 

9:14  P.  M.  —  The  first  burglar  pulls  off  his  cap,  an- 
nounces that  he  is  none  other  than  Dick  Maynard, 
of  the  United  States  Secret  Service,  and  that  he 
came  to  Morgan's  house  to  trap  the  girl  who, 
though  posing  as  a  member  of  the  Morgan  house- 
hold, is  in  reality  Red  Nellie,  the  Harlem  safe- 
cracker. 

9:15  P.  M.  —  The  second  burglar  pulls  off  his  cap,  an- 
nounces that  he  is  none  other  than  Bob  Blaisdell, 
of  the  United  States  Secret  Service,  and  that  he 
came  to  trap  the  first  secret  service  agent  who  was 
suspected  by  the  Chief  of  being  crooked. 

9:16  P.  M.  —  The  third  burglar  pulls  off  his  cap,  an- 
nounces that  he  is  none  other  than  John  D.  Mor- 
gan himself  and  that  he  came  to  trap  the  second 
secret  service  agent  who  is  in  reality  a  confederate 
of  Red  Nellie. 

9:17  P.  M.  —  Red  Nellie  pulls  off  her  wig,  announces 
that  she  is  none  other  than  Sally  O'Brien,  a  pri- 
vate detective,  and  that  she  came  to  trap  Morgan 

[196] 


ITS   VAUDEVILLE 

who  was  suspected  of  attempting  to  rob  his  own 
house. 

9:18  P.  M.  —  The  two  policemen  pull  off  their  false 
beards,  announce  that  they  are,  respectively,  John 
D.  Morgan  and  his  son,  John  D.  Morgan,  Jr., 
and  that  they  now  at  length  have  the  four  no- 
torious crooks  —  the  three  men  and  the  woman  — 
cornered  ! 

9:181/2  P.  M.  —  The  stage-hand  pulls  down  the  cur- 
tain. 


P.  M-  —  The  audience  pulls  off  the  wrappers 
of  its  Tutti-Frutti  and  gets  ready  for  the  classic 
dancers. 

Probably  the  finest  thing  in  vaudeville,  however, 
is  the  act  showing  the  reunion  of  the  old  Union  and 
the  old  Confederate  soldier  who  celebrate  the  en- 
tente cordiale  by  jointly  executing  a  soft  shoe  dance 
interspersed  with  somersaults  and  thereafter  playing 
a  medley  of  "  Dixie  "  and  "  Marching  Through 
Georgia  "  on  cornets,  though  there  are  connoisseurs 
who  prefer  the  gentleman  in  the  blue  dress  suit  who 
sings  the  song  about  following  a  girl  for  nine  blocks 
only  to  find  it  was  a  Scotchman  in  kilts.  There  is  a 
difference  of  opinion  about  vaudeville,  as  with  every- 
thing else.  Where  some  can  barely  keep  from 
laughing  themselves  off  their  seats  and  tumbling  into 
the  aisle  in  a  ready-to-burst  paroxysm  when  the 
comique  in  the  wide  red  pants  steps  into  the  foot- 


THE   POPULAR    THEATRE 

light  trough  and  alludes  to  it  as  the  Subway,  others 
who  get  merely  a  side-ache  laughing  at  the  comique 
simply  can't  control  themselves  and  get  completely 
doubled  up  when  the  man  in  the  purple  coat  with  the 
belt  at  the  back  says  to  the  man  in  the  green  coat 
with  the  belt  at  the  back,  "  You  know  my  girl?  Her 
name  is  Plaster.  I  go  to  court  Plaster  every  night. 
She  is  a  poor  girl  but  there's  lots  of  other  girls  as 
por-ous  Plaster." 

But,  granting  to  vaudeville  these  substantial  vir- 
tues, it  yet  seems  to  me  that  there  is  something  lack- 
ing. This  lack,  I  daresay,  lies  in  the  more  recent 
refinement  of  vaudeville  —  a  refinement  that  must 
already  have  unmistakably  impressed  itself  upon  the 
reader  —  and  the  consequent  passing  from  vaude- 
ville of  its  quondam  irresistible  slapstick  tonics.  In 
place  of  the  good  old  days  when  the  little  green- 
whiskered  Irishman  fell  onto  the  stage  backwards 
through  the  swinging  door  and,  colliding  with  the 
fat  blonde  in  the  red  satin  decollete,  caused  the  latter 
to  land  upon  his  stomach  with  a  resounding  kerplunk, 
present-day  vaudeville  presents  us  with  an  aloof  and 
tony  society  atmosphere  in  which  the  mauve  dress 
coats  of  the  gentlemen  fasten  in  front  with  a  loop, 
in  which  the  ladies  in  golf  clothes  carry  lorgnettes 
and  in  which  the  butlers  in  the  dramatic  sketches  are 
dressed  up  to  look  like  Thomas  Jefferson  at  an  im- 
portant State  dinner.  As  vaudeville  has  acquired 
this  air  of  elegance,  this  atmosphere  of  smartness, 
this  recherche  quality,  there  has  coincidentally  de- 
parted from  it  its  old  bounce  and  gusto.  Gone  that 
palmy  and  inspiriting  day  when  the  sensitive,  artistic 

[198] 


ITS   VAUDEVILLE 

Sister  Act  in  short  green  skirts  with  red  linings 
meandered  out  before  the  drop-curtain  embellished 
with  Beeman's  bald  head  and  hook-and-eye  and  root 
beer  ads.,  nonchalantly  scrutinized  the  dressy  old 
boy  in  the  stage  box  who  had  sneaked  away  from 
the  office  to  take  in  the  matinee,  and  then  went  at 
"My  Gal's  a  Highborn  Lady"  like  twin  gold- 
toothed  contralto  siege  guns.  Gone,  too,  the  lady 
in  the  white  satin  Mother  Hubbard  who  sat  in  the 
spotlight  and  played  sad  stuff  on  a  harp,  withdrawing 
her  hand  in  magnificent  gesture  after  each  pluck, 
and  meanwhile  chewing  a  greak  hunk  of  gum.  And 
gone  with  these,  alas,  the  old  slappings  in  the  face 
with  the  Police  Gazette,  the  old  wipings  of  the  saliva 
out  of  the  eye  upon  the  Dutch  comedian's  pronuncia- 
tion of  any  word  containing  more  than  one  S,  the 
old  cloutings  over  the  ear  with  the  stuffed  rolling-pin, 
the  lusty  old  fetches  upon  the  trousers'  seat  with  the 
slapstick  containing  the  blank  cartridge. 

Those,  gentlemen,  were  the  high  days  of  vaude- 
ville! Those  the  days  before  vaudevillians  became 
educated  and  polished,  as  we  find  them  today,  and 
before  they  learned  to  say  "  I  seen  "  instead  of  "  I 
have  saw."  Those  the  days  when  someone's  hand 
got  stuck  in  the  neck  of  a  decanter  at  least  four  times 
on  every  bill  and  when  the  mind-readers,  instead  of 
having  confederates  in  the  downstairs  audience,  sim- 
ply rattled  off  answers  to  imaginary  questions  by  per- 
sons seated  (if  one  followed  the  eyes  of  the  blind- 
folded mind-reader's  husband)  somewhere  in  the 
air  between  the  balcony  and  the  gallery.  Well,  well, 
I  seem  to  grow  sentimental!  But  the  scent  of  the 

[199] 


THE   POPULAR    THEATRE 

rosemary  lingers  in  my  nostrils  and  the  memories  of 
that  lovely  day  will  not  be  dimmed.  Vaudeville,  as 
we  currently  get  it,  fails  equally  to  fill  the  heart 
and  charm  the  senses. 

The  nature  of  this  new  vaudeville  may  be  further 
established  by  an  examination  into  what  are  called 
one-act  war  plays.  These  one-act  war  plays,  if  one 
may  judge  from  a  survey  of  the  vaudeville  stage  dur- 
ing the  past  two  years,  fall  into  three  specific  groups. 
In  the  first  group,  we  find  the  war  plays  in  which  a 
Broadway  star  in  a  loose  brown  dress  and  with  a  lot 
of  chalk  on  her  face  has  been  violated  by  a  drunken 
Prussian  general,  makes  a  long  speech  and  then 
shoots  herself  rather  than  give  birth  to  a  Hun.  In 
the  second  group,  the  war  plays  in  which  every  sus- 
picious person  in  the  cast,  with  the  exception  of  the 
overly  curious  and  periodically  visible  stagehand 
who  interprets  the  role  of  the  enemy  bombardment, 
turns  out  to  be  a  member  of  the  United  States  Se- 
cret Service.  And  in  the  third  group,  the  war 
plays  in  which  the  French  father  kills  his  little  Fifi 
rather  than  have  her  fall  into  the  hands  of  the  Ger- 
man barbarians  and  in  which  the  vision  of  an  actor 
dressed  up  to  look  unlike  Lincoln  is  beheld  through 
the  gauze  back-drop  just  as  the  curtain  comes  down.1 

1  Nothing  is  so  immediately  inimical  to  the  powers  of  imagination 
as  colossal  grandeur  or  stupendous  tragedy.  Imagination  is  not  the 
sudden  flower  of  great  emotions  born  of  great  adventures  and  won- 
drous spectacles,  but  the  meditative  flower  of  what  is  intrinsically 
rather  trivial.  No  man  ever  imagined  a  great  poem  while  his  eyes 
swept  the  vast  magnificence  of  a  Grand  Canyon  or  the  Inn  Valley 
from  a  Hungerberg  at  Innsbruck.  But  more  than  one  man  has  im- 
agined a  fine  poem,  and  has  written  a  fine  poem,  while  his  ardent 

[200] 


ITS   VAUDEVILLE 

The  enormous  acclaim  with  which  these  one-act 
war  plays  are  received  in  modern  big-time  vaude- 
ville is  equalled  only  by  the  favour  attending  the  one- 
act  plays,  or  sketches,  in  which,  respectively,  the  new 
doctor  is  mistaken  for  the  gas-man,  in  which  the  bag- 
gage man  who  comes  in  to  remove  the  trunks  is  mis- 
taken for  an  English  lord,  in  which  the  new  maid  is 
mistaken  by  the  master  of  the  house  for  his  sister 
whom  he  hasn't  seen  for  two  years,  in  which  the 
piano  mover  is  mistaken  by  the  young  society  girl 
for  her  millionaire  fiance,  in  which  the  new  janitor 
is  mistaken  by  the  butler  for  his  -mistress'  rich  uncle 
from  Brazil,  in  which  an  Irishwoman  is  mistaken  by 
her  husband  for  a  fiery  Spanish  senorita  with  whom 

eyes  swept  the  pulchritude  of  some  dubious  Helen  or  while  along 
41  country  road  his  gaze  rested  on  a  'violet.  Thus,  a  great  and 
dazzling  canvas  of  war  —  such  a  war  as  that  now  raging  in  the 
world  —  blinds  imagination  rather  than  stimulates  it.  Itself  greater 
than  imagination,  it  dwarfs  imagination  into  nothingness.  Years 
must  elapse,  and  perspective  intervene,  before  it  may  give  birth  to  a 
great  novel,  a  great  poem,  a  great  drama. 

Nowhere  is  this  seeming  paradox  exhibited  more  clearly  than  in 
the  theatre.  One  peace-time  mother's  grief  gives  theme-being  to  a 
Synge's  rare  imagination  in  terms  of  a  "Riders  to  the  Sea."  A 
hundred  housand  wartime  mothers'  grief  gives  theme-being  to  noth- 
ing save  tin-pot  melodrama  like  "  Seven  Days'  Leave "  or  "  The 
White  Feather."  From  the  comparatively  trivial  springs  a  work  of 
imaginative  beauty;  from  the  colossal  springs  a  mere  clattering  of 
hollow  focoanut  shells,  firing  of  cap  pistols  and  bombarding  of 
papier-mache  gunboats.  A  man  writes  a  fine  play  about  the  last 
will  and  testament  of  a  yokel  (Pinero's  "  Thunderbolt ") ;  another 
man  writes  a  fine  play  about  a  fellow  with  a  big  nose  (Rostand's 
"  Cyrano  de  Bergerac ") ;  still  another  writes  a  fine  play  about  a 
woman  with  a  mean  disposition  (Strindberg's  "  Father ")  —  but  a 
great  war  that  shakes  the  world  and  its  soul  moves  the  man  who 
beholds  it  and  is  shaken  by  it  to  the  composition  of  the  rankest 
sort  of  pot-boiler. 

[201] 


he  carried  on  at  the  masquerade  ball  the  night  be- 
fore, in  which  the  new  chauffeur  is  mistaken  for  a 
paper  hanger,  and  in  which  the  new  iceman  is  mis- 
taken by  the  maid  for  the  fashionable  clubman  ex- 
pected for  the  reception.  Slightly,  though  very 
slightly,  less  favoured  are  the  kind  of  one-act  plays 
in  which,  in  a  scene  called  "  The  Street  of  the  Thou- 
sand Misdemeanors,"  a  couple  of  characters  named 
Virtue  and  Innocence  swat  a  character  named  Temp- 
tation over  the  head  with  a  club  on  which  is  painted 
the  word  Determination,  to  say  nothing  of  the  kind 
of  one-act  plays  in  which,  when  the  curtain  falls,  a 
bachelor  is  sitting  back  in  a  chair  listening  to  the 
daughter  of  his  deceased  sweetheart  playing  the  old 
song  on  the  piano. 

As  I  have  said,  art  may  be  art,  but  somehow  I 
don't  seem  to  care  for  this  new  classic  vaudeville. 
I'd  give  it  all,  bag  and  baggage,  for  just  five  min- 
utes once  again  with  the  homespun  vaudeville  show 
of  twenty-five  years  ago,  the  vaudeville  show  in 
which  the  magnificently  clad  sidewalk  conversation- 
alist removed  his  high  silk  hat  and  placed  it  on  the 
floor,  and  in  which  his  disreputable  hobo  confrere, 
always  mistaking  the  hat  for  a  cuspidor,  would  then 
project  thereinto  an  homeric  and  bewildering  spit. 


[202] 


PROPERTY  OF 
DiPARTMlNT  OF  DRAMATIC  ART 


Chapter  Fifteen:   Its    "Small 
Time '    Vaudeville 

It  is  the  secret  ambition  of  all  small  boys  around 
the  age  of  seven  to  grow  up  to  be  the  august  per- 
sonage in  the  blue  shirt  and  embroidered  galluses 
who  stands  with  enviable  hauteur  on  the  back  step 
of  the  ice-wagon  and  whose  profession  it  is  to  hang 
the  cake  on  the  pendant  brass  dingus  and  determine 
that  it  is  exactly  the  right  amount  under  weight.  It 
is  the  expressed  ambition  of  all  big  artists  of  the 
so-called  Small  Time  vaudeville  around  the  ages  of 
seventeen  to  seventy  inclusive  to  grow  up  to  be  the 
august  personage  in  the  blue  evening  clothes  and 
yellow  chamois  gloves  who  stands  with  modish  dis- 
dain in  the  footlight  trough  of  the  Big  Time  Broad- 
way vaudeville  theatre  and  whose  profession  it  is 
to  ask  the  audience  why  the  Kaiser  was  born  in 
Bermuda  and  then  quickly  say  it  was  because  the 
Kaiser  is  a  big  onion. 

The  naivete  of  these  pickle  herrings  of  the  vaude- 
ville preparatory  school  has  about  it  not  a  little  of 
the  wistful  and  charming.  Like  so  many  artless 
Peter  Pans  they  pursue  through  travail  and  hard- 
ship, over  the  rough  road  of  the  years,  the  rainbow 
at  whose  coveted  end  they  may  find  the  right  sort  of 

[203] 


THE   POPULAR    THEATRE 

pancake  derby  and  bunch  of  chin  whiskers  and  helio- 
trope waistcoat  wherewith  to  brew  the  necessary 
chuckle  in  the  palates  of  the  high  priests,  and  so  in- 
sure to  themselves  a  hearing  in  some  great  vaude- 
ville university  on  Broadway  where  tread  the  boards 
such  baronial  professors  and  professorinen  of  the 
art  as  Mademoiselle  Tanguay,  Mons.  Houdini  and 
Berkowitz's  Trained  Dogs.  To  the  end  that  ulti- 
mately they  may  achieve  this  magnificent  goal  and 
attain  to  this  proud  estate,  the  souls  of  the  Small 
Time  strive  and  struggle  tirelessly,  tenaciously  — 
and  so  great  and  obvious  is  this  striving  and  struggle 
that  the  charitable  heart  must  truly  ache  just  a  little 
when  one  of  them  like  a  certain  Mr.  Larry  Comer, 
for  example,  after  struggling  for  years  to  reach  even 
the  half-way  goal  of  a  Small  Time  stage  in  New 
York  City  and  billing  himself  shrinkingly  as  "  The 
Beau  Brummel  of  Vaudeville,"  finds  on  the  opening 
night  of  his  appearance  in  Loew's  theatre  in  West 
Forty-second  Street  that  the  vile  ignoramus  who 
printed  the  program  had  turned  the  "  u  "  of  the 
second  word  upside  down  and  so  announced  Mr. 
Comer  as  "  The  Bean  Brummel  of  Vaudeville." 

Acquainted  with,  and  appreciative  of,  such  ribald 
catastrophes,  one  can  not  but  be  duly  sympathetic 
toward  such  artists  and  artistes  as  take  no  chances 
and  quite  frankly  and  honestly,  at  space  rates,  an- 
nounce their  virtues  to  the  world  through  the  ga- 
zettes of  their  professions.  Lying  before  me  on 
my  writing  table  is  the  copy  of  such  a  gazette  (Fa- 
riety)  and  I  cull  therefrom  such  confessionals  as, 
for  instance,  that  of  a  Mr.  Johnny  Dooley,  who 
[204] 


ITS   VAUDEVILLE 

takes   a  half  page  advertisement  modestly  to  an- 
nounce that  he  is 

1.  The  Most  Versatile  Comedian  of  the  Day. 

2.  An  Educated  Gentleman. 

3.  An  Artistic  Character  Actor. 

4.  A  Trained  Athlete. 

5.  A  Clown,  An  Acrobat,  A  Musician.     Can  deliver  a 
roaring  comic  song  or  a  sympathetic  ballad  with  equal 
success. 

6.  An  Author. 

7.  An  Originator  with  Up-to-the-Minute  Ideas. 

And  as,  for  example,  that  of  his  partner,  a  Miss 
Yvette  Rugel,  who,  getting  in  on  the  same  adver- 
tisement, proclaims  herself: 

(1)  A  Beautiful,  Refined,  Wonderfully  Formed  Girl; 

(2)  A  Remarkably  Beautiful  Cultivated  Soprano  Voice; 

(3)  One  Who  Has  Successfully  Followed  All  the  Grand 
Opera  Prima  Donnas  Who  Entered  Vaudeville  on 
the  Same  Bill. 

The  La  Vars,  on  the  other  hand,  are  observed 
to  content  themselves  with  a  poetic  pronunciamento 
having  a  Heine  touch,  to  the  effect  that  u  if  dancing 
was  coffee  with  flavor  supreme,  the  Dancing  La 
Vars  would  furnish  the  cream  ";  while  Gracie  Doyle 
and  Lillianne  Rucker,  "  The  Fashion  Plates,"  whis- 
per confidentially  that  Mrs.  Vanderbilt,  Mrs.  Astor 
and  the  other  leaders  of  the  Four  Hundred  deliber- 
ately steal  from  them  all  their  ideas  in  the  way  of 
up-to-date  Parisian  dress.  Mr.  Sidney  Rosenbaum 
reveals  himself  as  "  The  Niftiest  Society  Comedian 

£205]; 


THE   POPULAR    THEATRE 

in  Vaudeville  in  his  Refined  and  Ultra  Act  Entitled 
'  Spilling  the  Beans.'  '  And  one  reads  with  a  cer- 
tain sensation  of  awe  that  Miss  Estelle  de  Louvre, 
;t  That  Snappy  Gal,"  at  present  turning  'em  away  on 
the  Pantages  Circuit,  will  return  to  New  York  in 
two  months  and  eat  'em  alive  with  her  new  classical 
Grecian  and  Athenian  dances.  .  .  .  The  panorama 
is  one  replete  with  "  Smart  Entertainers,"  "  Inter- 
national Favorites,"  "  Society's  Pets,"  "  Tremendous 
Hits,"  "  Classy  Dressers  "  and  the  like  —  a  veri- 
table field  of  little  violets.  .  .  .  Yet  a  chapter  such 
as  this  would  be  a  sorry  thing  did  it  neglect  to  men- 
tion one  particular,  and  somewhat  larger,  violet  who 
calls  himself  Stan  Stanley.  Mr.  Stanley,  it  appears 
from  his  advertisement,  is  at  once  the  greatest  bil- 
liard player  in  the  world,  and  one  whose  perform- 
ances in  that  line  have  come  as  a  thunderbolt  to  all 
vaudeville  and  other  art-loving  audiences.  Regard- 
ing his  other  philosophies  and  his  attitude  toward 
the  community  in  general,  Mr.  Stanley  pays  for  the 
necessary  space  to  state : 

There  are  lots  of  brainless  punks  who  just  fiddle  their  time 
away  playing  pool,  while  billiard  players  are  all  brilliant 
men.  It  takes  your  mind  off  worldly  care.  Hoppe  made 
$80,000  last  season.  Did  you  ever  hear  of  a  pool  player 
making  that  much?  Learn  billiards,  boys;  it  will  improve 
your  act.  Newspapermen  and  authors  play  billiards,  never 
pool.  A  billiard  player  has  entree  to  the  best  clubs  all  over 
the  country.  A  billiard  player  always  mingles  with  the  real 
men.  A  pool  player  frequents  cellars.  A  pool  player  must 
associate  with  low-brows.  I  am  only  a  hardworking  come- 
dian, but  nevertheless  because  I  can  play  billiards  I  go  to  the 
best  clubs  and  meet  the  finest  people  all  over  the  country ! 

£206] 


ITS   VAUDEVILLE 

Let  us  now  consider  for  a  few  brief  spaces  the 
"  refinement "  negotiated  by  these  vaudevillians. 
The  average  vaudeville  gentleman's  idea  of  getting 
himself  up  as  a  Van  Bibber,  a  clubman,  a  fashion- 
able, a  sort  of  composite  of  Ward  McAllister,  Berry 
Wall  and  Freddie  Gebhardt,  is,  first,  to  put  a  great 
quantity  of  vaseline  on  his  hair  and  then  rub  the 
hair  to  a  high  gloss  with  a  bootblack's  cloth;  second, 
to  employ  a  large  diamond  ring  upon  the  index 
finger  of  his  right  hand;  and  third,  to  don  a  top  hat 
a  size  and  a  half  too  large  for  him.  While 
the  average  vaudeville  lady's  idea  of  inspiring  envy 
in  the  bosom  of  Mrs.  Vincent  Astor  is  anything  pink 
with  a  sufficient  abundance  of  silver  spangles  upon 
it  to  make  it  look  like  one  of  the  chandeliers  in 
Sherry's.  Where,  on  the  so-called  legitimate  stage, 
the  average  young  actress'  idea  of  a  smart  debutante 
is  generally  summed  up  in  a  bunch  of  sweet  peas  and 
dropping  the  "  H  "  out  of  Bar  Harbour,  the  vaude- 
ville young  lady's  idea  would  seem  for  the  most  part 
to  rest  in  a  pair  of  pink  silk  slippers  (whatever  the 
colour  of  the  costume),  a  piece  of  pale  blue  tulle  in 
the  hair  and  a  line  somewhere  toward  the  end  of  the 
sketch  in  which  she  wistfully  confesses  that  she  is 
tired  of  the  Newport  Casino  with  its  airs  and  affecta- 
tions and  longs  once  again  to  have  a  glass  of  beer 
in  Stauch's  Cafe  down  at  Coney.  The  jeune  pre- 
mier, or  leading  juvenile,  of  the  Broadway  stage  is, 
as  everyone  knows,  to  be  distinguished  without  much 
difficulty  from  the  wooden  furniture  and  the  rest  of 
the  actors  by  virtue  of  the  fact  that  he  always  carries 
a  highly  polished  gold  cigarette  case  and  wears  a 

,[207] 


THE   POPULAR    THEATRE 

gold  key  chain  draped  into  his  trouser's  pocket  from 
the  third  belt  loop.  On  the  Small  Time  vaudeville 
stage,  the  juvenile  appearing  in  a  one-act  play  (or 
sketch,  as  it  is  better  known)  may  be  located  not 
quite  so  readily.  Picking  out  the  juvenile  here  be- 
comes a  sort  of  waiting  game.  One  waits  until  the 
most  inopportune  moment  in  the  dramatic  action  of 
the  sketch  and  the  young  man  who  then  proceeds 
to  do  a  clog-dance  —  that  young  man  is  the  juvenile. 
It  seems  to  be  a  tradition  of  the  Small  Time  vaude- 
ville playlet  that  whenever  a  husband  comes  back 
from  his  club  unexpectedly  and  finds  his  wife  in  the 
embrace  of  her  lover,  the  lover  must  promptly  dis- 
engage the  wife's  arms,  emit,  for  the  benefit  of  the 
husband,  a  sarcastic  snicker  and  proceed  forthwith 
to  do  a  bit  of  a  clog,  winding  up  with  the  conven- 
tional pedal  pat-pat  upon  the  bass  drummer's  last 
two  bangs. 

The  twenty  trump  cards  of  the  Small  Time  hu- 
mour, in  the  order  of  their  respective  efficiency,  are 
the  following: 

I.  Cheese1  (preferably  Gorgonzola;  second  choice,  Swiss; 
third  choice,  the  holes  in  the  Swiss). 

1  One  often  wonders  at  the  genesis  of  the  notion  that  cheese  is 
funny,  and  that  an  allusion  to  it  should  infallibly  cause  merriment 
in  a  theatre  audience.  It  cannot  be  because  of  the  perfume  of  the 
cheese;  for  an  allusion  to  the  Swiss  or  the  Gorgonzola  cheese,  which 
are  practically  without  bouquet,  invariably  brews  a  louder  laughter 
than  an  allusion  to  such  more  vehement  cheeses  as  Limburger  and 
Camembert.  Nor  can  it  be  because  the  word  cheese  itself  has  a  comic 
sound ;  cheese  is  a  word  intrinsically  not  nearly  so  funny  in  sound  as, 
for  example,  the  words  chow  chow,  jelly  and  cookie,  •which,  though 
of  an  exotic  Chinese  quality,  are  unavailing  for  purposes  of  laughter 
in  the  playhouse.  Granting  that  cheese  is  a  ludicrous  creature, 
why  should  Erie  be  funny  and  Liederkranz,  which  is  much  like 

[208] 


ITS   VAUDEVILLE 

2.  The   dill   pickle,     (a.  The  small   growths   upon   the 
pickle,  referred  to  as  "  warts."     b.  The  squirting  pro- 
clivities of  the  pickle.) 

3.  Whiskers  (preferably  their  soup-swabbing  propensity). 

4.  Grapefruit  (see  No.  2,  Clause  b). 

5.  The  seat  of  the  pants. 

6.  Monsewer. 

7.  An  onion. 

8.  Hoboken. 

9.  Newark. 

10.  The  in-Seine  River. 

11.  A  waistcoat  of  any  colour  other  than  black,  white,  or 
gray. 

12.  See  No.  5,  and  attach  a  piece  of  fly-paper. 

13.  The  wrist-watch. 

14.  The  Champs  Elysees,  pronounced  the  Chumps  Lizzie. 

15.  The    remark,    "  You    Big    Swede,"    addressed    to    a 
coloured  gentleman. 

1 6.  An  allusion  to  the  wife  of  the  Tsar  as  the  Tsardine. 

17.  Imprinting  a  kiss  of  goodbye  on  a  dollar  bill  about  to 
be  loaned  to  someone. 

1 8.  On  making  an  exit,  suddenly  bending  in  at  the  waist 
as  if  expecting  a  kick  from  the  rear. 

19.  The  remark  that  Germany  is  the  place  where  the  germs 
come  from. 

it,  unfunny?  What,  in  short,  makes  an  audience  Punt  the  Swiss, 
Limburger,  Gorgonzola  and  Roquefort  cheeses  and  be  urbane  and 
gracious  toivard  the  Edam,  Miinster,  Stilton,  Cream,  Port-du-Salut 
and  Hand  cheeses  f  That  the  laughter  of  an  audience  is  conditioned 
on  the  effluvium  of  the  cheese  and  that  it  is  therefore  the  effluvium 
and  not  the  cheese  that  amuses  the  audience,  one  is  indisposed  to 
grant.  The  empyreuma,  or  sachet,  of  the  finnan  haddie,  for  in- 
stance, is  of  tiao-fold  the  eloquence  of  even  the  Camembert,  yet  the 
audience  does  not  hold  jubilee  upon  a  communication  regarding  the 
finnan  haddie,  nor  for  that  matter  even  the  finnan  haddie's  more 
vociferous  confrere,  the  smoked  herring. 

[209] 


THE   POPULAR    THEATRE 

20.  A  reference  to  a  washboard  as  "  The  Woman's  Home 
Companion." 

A  careful  contemplation  of  the  Small  Time  vaude- 
villes brings  to  light  the  news  that  the  Small  Time 
vaudevilles  would  unquestionably  have  to  close  up 
shop  were  it  not  for  the  invention  of  the  word 
"  boob."  This  word  "  boob  "  is  to  the  Small  Time 
vaudevilles  what  the  names  Carter,  Travers  and 
Jack  Grayson  have  long  been  to  Broadway  play- 
wrights and  their  equivalents  in  the  field  of  novel 
writing.  From  8:10  P.M.,  when  the  curtain  lifts 
on  a  Small  Time  vaudeville  performance,  until  II 
P  .M.,  when  finally  it  falls,  every  act  on  the  bill  em- 
ploys the  word  at  least  once  and  often  as  many  as  a 
dozen  times.  Every  act,  that  is,  except  the  team 
of  Japanese  acrobats  —  which  uses  whatever  is  the 
Japanese  for  the  word.  Precisely  what  the  word 
"  boob  "  means  is  a  matter  to  which  I  am  not  privy, 
but  one  judges  from  the  manner  of  its  employment 
in  the  vaudeville  halls  that  the  only  persons  in  the 
world  who  were  not,  or  are  not,  "  boobs  "  are  Gen- 
eral Joffre,  Christy  Matthewson,  President  Wilson, 
Benny  Leonard,  Teddy  Roosevelt,  General  Pershing 
and  the  proprietor  of  Joel's  chile  concarne  restaurant 
in  West  Forty-first  Street.  The  synopsis  of  four  out 
of  every  five  Small  Time  sketches,  when  handed  to 
the  performer  by  the  sketch  writer  commissioned  to 
get  up  the  act,  must  look  much  like  this : 

9  :oo  p.  M. —  Curtain. 

9 :05  P.  M. —  Someone  calls  you  a  boob. 

[210] 


ITS   VAUDEVILLE 

9:10  P.M. —  Someone  else  calls  you  a  big  boob. 

9:15  P.M. —  Someone  else  calls  you  a  great  big 
boob. 

9:20  P.M. —  Someone  else  calls  you  a  great  big 
fat  boob. 

9 :22  p.  M. —  You  turn  out  to  be  a  very  clever  de- 
tective from  Headquarters. 

The  songs  which  the  artists  and  artistes  of  the 
minor  vaudevilles  select  for  rendition  may  be  di- 
vided into  six  classes.  These  six  are: 

1 i )  Songs  in  which  the  moon  shines  down  on 

something. 

(2)  Songs   in  which  one  is   assured  that  one's 

mother  is  one's  real  sweetheart. 

(3)  Songs  in  which  is  emphasized  the  invincibil- 

ity of  the  boys  in  blue.  (No  attention  is 
paid  to  the  more  recent  change  to  khaki 
since  neither  "  will  be  true  "  nor  "  to  you  " 
can  be  made  to  rhyme  with  it.) 

(4)  Songs  in  which  are  described  the  amours  of 

an  Hawaiian  belle  and  an  Irishman  named 
O'Brien. 

(5)  Songs  in  which  each  line  of  the  chorus  be- 

gins with  a  certain  letter  of  the  alphabet, 
the  letters  being  grouped  together  in  the 
last  line  and  spelling  some  appropriate 
word. 

(6)  Songs  in  which  are  described  the  feelings  of 

one  person  since  the  other  told  him  that 
she  loved  him. 

[211] 


THE   POPULAR    THEATRE 

That  the  artists  and  artistes  should  therefore  un- 
der the  circumstances  seek  jealously  to  safeguard 
their  professional  position  and  honour  when  that 
position  and  honour  are  infringed  upon,  impeached, 
or  assailed  by  the  less  eminent  and  so  envious  mem- 
bers of  the  profession,  will  be  readily  understood 
and  appreciated  by  the  mere  outsider.  And  it 
therefore  comes  about  that  in  the  divers  professional 
gazettes  of  these  artists  and  artistes  one  observes  a 
weekly  column  of  repartee  replete  with  vigorous  de- 
nials and  vivid  defences,  and  strewn  with  piquant  and 
devastating  mots.  From  one  such  journal  recently 
I  extracted  the  appended  two  instances  of  righteous 
indignation.  They  will  serve,  I  trust,  as  a  suffi- 
ciently illuminating  picture  of  the  manner  in  which 
the  artists  and  artistes  conduct  their  controversies 
and  battle  for  their  firesides  and  the  purity  of  their 
professional  reputations. 

Exhibit  A. —  A  letter  from  Mons.  Allaire,  of  the 
Three  Bounding  Allaires,  re  Miss  Flo  D'Arcy,  of 
The  D'Arcy  Sisters: 

Dear  Editor:  Please  to  print  this  letter  as  I  want  to  de- 
nounce to  the  world  the  action  of  Flo  D'Arcy,  of  The 
D'Arcy  Sisters,  who  has  deliberately  pinched  my  one-armed 
back  spring  which  was  invented  solely  by  me  as  can  be  proven 
by  my  personal  agent  Mr.  Joe  Ludesheimer,  who  has  been 
my  personal  agent  for  years  as  well  as  the  agent  for  the 
Three  Bounding  Allaires  of  which  I  am  the  personal  agent 
and  manager.  My  one-armed  back  spring  has  made  a  sen- 
sation wherever  displayed  in  America  or  Europe  and  I  want 
to  warn  Flo  D'Arcy,  of  The  D'Arcy  Sisters,  that  if  she 
[212] 


ITS   VAUDEVILLE 

don't  cease  it  I  will  prosecute  her  to  the  full  extent  of  the 
law  which  I  have  already  asked  our  lawyer,  Mr.  Isadore  P. 
Klein,  to  take  steps  towards. 
Thanking  you,  I  am,  yours, 

AUG.  ALLAIRE,  of  The  Three  Bounding  Allaires. 

Exhibit  B. —  A  letter  from  Miss  Flo  D'Arcy  of 
The  D'Arcy  Sisters,  re  the  above : 

Dear  Editor:  I  dislike  to  be  unlady-like,  as  my  conduct 
as  a  member  of  the  famous  team  of  D'Arcy  Sisters  who  have 
played  successfully  in  all  parts  of  the  world  is  well  known 
to  all  my  dear  friends  in  vaudeville  always  to  be  strictly 
ladylike,  but  I  can't  let  the  remarks  of  one,  Aug.  Allaire,  of 
The  Three  Bounding  Allaires,  go  by  unnoticed.  I  want 
to  say  to  Aug.  Allaire  that  if  he  claims  I  stole  the  one- 
armed  back  spring  from  him  he  is  a  liar,  as  I  copied  the 
one-armed  back  spring  from  Oscar  Delarmo,  of  Delarmo  and 
Astor,  with  his  kind  permission.  Mr.  Oscar  Delarmo  has 
used  the  one-armed  back  spring  for  twenty  years  and  twenty 
years  ago  Aug.  Allaire  of  The  Three  Bounding  Allaires, 
was  probably  still  sweeping  out  some  Baltimore  Lunch  place 
on  the  Bowery. 

Faithfully  yours, 

Miss  FLO  D'ARCY, 
Of  the  D'Arcy  Sisters  —  booked  solid  for  one  year. 

What  a  still  fertile  field  here  for  the  pen  of  her 
that  was  Helen  Green  1 


Chapter  Sixteen:  What  Its  Public 
Wants 

That  it  is  a  most  difficult,  if  not  altogether  im- 
possible, matter  to  tell  what  the  public  wants  is  a 
canard  sedulously  cultivated  and  disseminated  by 
those  very  persons  who  know  exactly  what  the  pub- 
lic wants,  who  know  that  giving  the  public  exactly 
what  it  wants  is  as  easy  as  rolling  off  a  cigarette  and 
who,  through  the  crafty  promulgation  of  the  canard, 
contrive  shrewdly  to  have  themselves  regarded  by 
swallowers  of  the  canard  as  remarkable  and  per- 
spicacious creatures  possessed  of  an  eerie  gift  for 
crystal-gazing,  palmistry,  tea-leaf-reading,  fortune- 
telling,  divination  and  necromancy  in  general.  Yet 
the  persistence  of  the  delusion  that  a  successful  and 
highly  prosperous  catering  to  the  public  tastes  is  a 
rocky  road,  and  one  strewn  with  the  corpses  of 
countless  adventurers,  is  indefatigable.  Why,  it  is 
not  easy  to  say;  unless  one  recalls  that  such  sister  de- 
lusions as  the  notion  that  a  cold  in  the  head  will  if 
left  alone  cure  itself  in  nine  days  and  the  idea  that 
an  expensive  cigar  is  always  stronger  than  a  cheap 
one  are  equally  vigorous  and  persistent. 

The  theory  that  no  person  knows  precisely  what 
it  is  that  the  public  wants  and  that  the  person  who 


ITS   PUBLIC 

succeeds  in  giving  the  public  what  it  wants  does  so 
largely  as  a  matter  of  lucky  accident  falls  to  pieces 
immediately  one  remembers,  first,  that  the  successful 
person  started  out  with  the  deliberate  idea  of  giving 
the  public  something  it  wanted  and,  second,  that  this 
same  person  very  often  succeeds  in  giving  the  pub- 
lic what  it  wants  the  next  time  he  tries  and  the  time 
after  that,  and  the  time  after  that.  That  this  per- 
son may  in  his  enterprise  fail  once  in  a  while  does 
not  shatter  the  statement  that  the  business  of  giving 
the  public  what  it  wants  is  more  or  less  a  sinecure 
any  more  than  the  failure  of  a  pole  vaulter  who  twice 
has  negotiated  some  twelve  feet  two  inches  and 
misses  the  third  time  shatters  the  statement  that  the 
pole  vaulter  knows  exactly  the  technique  that  per- 
mitted him  to  make  the  previous  auspicious  attempts. 
Giving  the  public  what  it  wants  is  as  simple  a  matter 
as  elementary  mathematics,  but  it  is  as  unreasonable 
to  suppose,  therefore,  that  the  man  who  under- 
stands what  the  public  wants  and  how  to  give  it  to 
the  public  must  never  under  any  circumstances  miss 
the  mark  as  it  would  be  to  suppose,  in  an  equally 
incomplex  direction,  that  the  man  who  understands 
how  the  face  must  be  shaved  and  how  to  shave  it 
must  therefore  never  under  any  circumstances  cut 
himself. 

Probably  more  vehemently  than  any  other  class, 
the  persons  connected  with  the  theatre  proclaim  the 
impossibility  of  predicting  and  deciphering  the  pal- 
ate of  the  mob.  Yet  what  are  the  facts  once  we 
inquire  into  them?  In  the  last  decade,  how  many 
theatrical  managers  have  failed  to  make  money  out 


THE   POPULAR    THEATRE 

of  this  very  same  public  taste  which  they  allege  they 
are  unable  accurately  to  plumb?  Klaw  and  Er- 
langer,  Cohan  and  Harris,  the  Shuberts,  A.  H. 
Woods,  Morosco,  Dillingham,  Belasco,  Comstock, 
Gest,  Ziegfeld,  even  the  young  fellows  and  begin- 
ners like  Williams,  Hopkins,  Walker  —  they've  all 
figured  the  thing  out  profitably.  And  if  now  and 
again  we  find  a  theatrical  manager  like  the  late 
Charles  Frohman  who  did  not  so  accurately  figure 
out  what  the  public  wanted  and  who  therefore  did 
not  make  so  much  money,  we  have  the  reason  not  in 
the  fact  that  it  is  difficult  to  figure  out  what  the 
public  wants,  but  in  the  fact  that,  though  it  is  com- 
paratively easy,  Mr.  Frohman  was  not  entirely  privy 
to  the  way  in  which  to  do  it. 

Charles  Frohman  was  an  impracticable  man.  He 
once  said,  "  There  is  no  such  thing  as  '  the  '  public. 
There  are  a  thousand  different  publics.  The  man- 
ager who  talks  of  '  the  '  public  is  the  kind  of  man- 
ager who  believes  that  the  public  holds  meetings  in 
Cooper  Union  to  decide  what  it  likes  and  doesn't 
like."  And  there  Mr.  Frohman  made  his  mistake 
and  lost  money.  True,  the  public  does  not  hold  meet- 
ings in  Cooper  Union  to  settle  upon  its  tastes,  but 
those  tastes  are  every  bit  as  settled  upon  as  if  the 
public  did  hold  meetings  in  Cooper  Union  to  settle 
them.  Before  "  Pollyanna  "  was  produced,  George 
Tyler  predicted  it  would  make  a  fortune.  Before 
"  Moloch  "  was  produced,  George  Tyler  predicted 
it  would  lose  money.  The  only  financial  failure 
George  M.  Cohan  has  written  in  the  last  decade  was 
"  The  Miracle  Man."  The  night  it  was  produced 


ITS   PUBLIC 

he  told  me  he  was  extremely  dubious  that  .it  was 
what  the  public  wanted.  Three  days  after  he  read 
the  manuscript  of  "  It  Pays  to  Advertise,"  and 
three  months  before  he  produced  the  play,  Mr. 
Cohan  told  me  it  was  exactly  the  sort  of  thing  the 
public  wanted  and  would  fill  double  the  purse  of 
Fortunatus.  Ziegfeld  knows  exactly  what  the  pub- 
lic wants,  gives  it  to  the  public  year  in  and  year  out 
in  "  The  Follies  " —  never  failing  and  playing  to 
as  high  as  $27,000  a  week.  The  Shuberts  jam  the 
Winter  Garden  four  times  in  five.  Dillingham 
crowds  the  Hippodrome.  And  Albee  packs  the 
Palace  with  exactly  the  kind  of  vaudeville  the  pub- 
lic wants.  The  playwrights  who  sidestep  art  for 
art's  sake,  whose  one  concern  is  figuring  out  the 
popular  taste  and  coining  it  into  two-dollar  bills, 
make  money  just  as  easily.  George  Cohan  has 
made  several  fortunes.  So  has  George  Broadhurst. 
George  V.  Hobart,  Goodman,  Marcin,  A.  E. 
Thomas,  Winchell  Smith,  Megrue,  Sheldon  — 
they've  all  found  the  thing  comparatively  easy. 

Leaving  the  theatre  for  the  moment,  we  find  the 
matter  has  been  quite  as  absurdly  simple  for  men 
in  other  avenues.  Robert  W.  Chambers  knows  ex- 
actly what  the  public  wants  and  regularly  provides 
the  public  with  what  it  wants.  Irvin  Cobb  knows 
almost  as  well  and  so  does  Mary  Roberts  Rine- 
hart.  Richard  Harding  Davis  knew,  as  Rupert 
Hughes  knows  today.  To  object  that  this  is  no  fair 
way  to  argue,  since  it  is  possible  these  popular  writ- 
ers failed  many  times  before  they  were  able  to  learn 
what  the  public  wanted  is  to  interpose  an  objection 

[2171 


THE   POPULAR    THEATRE 

that  is  invalid.  Chambers  knew  from  the  very  be- 
ginning —  without  a  single  failure  1  So  did  Cobb. 
So  did  Mary  Rinehart.  So  did  the  rest.  They 
were  successful  prognosticators  from  the  start. 
Their  very  materially  increased  rewards  today  are 
but  the  result  of  their  cumulative  success  in  fathom- 
ing the  popular  taste.  Cyrus  K.  Curtis,  Harold  Bell 
Wright,  Herbert  Kaufman,  Houdini,  three  out  of 
every  five  of  the  moving  picture  magnificos,  Cather- 
ine Chisholm  Gushing,  Gene  Stratton  Porter,  Gil- 
lette the  Safety  Razor  Man,  Henry  Ford,  Elinor 
Glyn,  Bernard  Shaw,  Eva  Tanguay,  Theodore 
Roosevelt,  Eleanor  Porter  and  Billy  Sunday  have 
figured  the  thing  out  in  these  days  just  as  aptly  and 
as  completely  as  Oscar  Hammerstein,  Elbert  Hub- 
bard,  Charles  H.  Hoyt,  Paul  Dresser,  the  Hanlons, 
Charles  Garvice,  Albert  Ross,  P.  T.  Barnum,  Hires 
of  Hires'  Root  Beer,  Charles  Klein,  Lincoln  J.  Car- 
ter, Imre  and  Bolossy  Kiralfy,  Bert  Standish,  Charles 
Yale,  Lew  Wallace,  Sir  Thomas  Lipton,  Doctor  Bee- 
man  and  John  Philip  Sousa  figured  it  out  in  the 
yesterdays. 

One  must  grant,  obviously  enough,  that  the  per- 
son planning  a  financial  coup  against  the  popular 
taste  have  in  hand  the  fundamental  technic  of  his 
particular  line  of  activity.  For  it  is  unreasonable  to 
demand  against  the  present  argument  that  if  the 
thing  is  as  easy  as  is  here  claimed,  anyone  should  be 
able  to  do  it.  Each  man  to  his  trade.  One  cannot 
demand  that  General  Pershing,  for  example,  be  able 
to  decipher  the  public's  taste  for  music  shows,  or 
that  George  Cohan  be  able  to  figure  out  the  exact 


ITS   PUBLIC 

way  to  indent  the  Hindenburg  line.  But  granted 
these  fundamentals,  the  matter  of  giving  the  mob 
what  it  likes  becomes  a  simple  business.  How  many 
men  do  you  suppose  one  would  encounter  in  the 
poor-houses  of  the  United  States  who  had  definitely 
tried  to  give  the  public  what  it  wanted  and  had 
failed?  The  failures,  the  paupers,  are  not  those 
who  have  tried  to  sell  the  public  what  it  wanted 
but  those  who  have  tried  to  sell  to  some  middleman 
what  they  believed  the  middleman  thought  the  pub- 
lic wanted.  .  .  .  The  middleman  is  not  in  the  poor- 
house. 

What  does  the  public  want?  Leaving  for  some 
other  statistician  the  facts  that  the  public  wants  (with 
a  variation  so  infinitesimal  that  it  is  negligible)  blue 
bathing  suits,  two  straws  with  its  glass  of  lemonade 
and  rectangular  bed  pillows,  let  us  confine  ourselves 
here  mainly  to  the  case  of  the  theatre.  That  it  is 
a  not  especially  difficult  business  to  give  the  public 
precisely  what  it  wants  in  the  theatre  must  be  im- 
mediately apparent  to  any  unprejudiced  person  who 
remembers  that  a  theatre  audience  from  time  im- 
memorial has  never  once  failed  to  respond  at  a  music 
show  to  the  device  of  having  the  chorus  girls  throw 
things  —  balls,  candies,  what  not  —  into  the  audi- 
torium or  at  a  drama  to  the  device  of  having  one 
character  knock  a  revolver  out  of  the  hand  of  an- 
other character  or  at  a  vaudeville  show  to  the  device 
of  having  one  comique  spray  another  comique  in 
the  face  with  an  atomizer. 

There  are,  in  the  theatre,  approximately  one  hun- 
dred stereotyped  and  familiar  tricks  which  may  be 

[219] 


THE   POPULAR    THEATRE 

relied  upon  to  affect  unfailingly  a  theatre  audience 

—  tricks  ranging  all  the  way  from  the  elbow  that 
suddenly  slips  off  the  edge  of  a  table  (a  certain  laugh- 
provoker)    to  the  equally  positive  thrill-brewer  of 
the  shattered  glass  window.     The   response   of   a 
theatrical  audience  is  largely  a  matter  of  habit,  of 
tradition,  and  so  the  devices  which  make  an  audi- 
ence laugh  or  weep  or  experience  a  tingling  of  the 
vertebrae  change  in  the  main  but  little.     I,  for  ex- 
ample, have  been  going  to  the  theatre  professionally 

—  about  four  nights  a  week  —  for  the  last  four- 
teen years;  yet  I  find  that  I  laugh  today  at  the  fat 
pantaloon  who  suddenly  trips  and  lands  with  a  loud 
thud  on  his  chassis  just  the  same  as  I  laughed  at  the 
same  business  fourteen  years  ago.     And  the  much 
more  casual  theatregoer,  the  man  who  goes  to  the 
theatre  less  frequently,  laughs  at  the  thing  with  a 
doubled    guffaw    power.     Human    nature    doesn't 
change. 

Speaking  of  this  and  the  public's  admiration  for 
so-called  happy  endings  to  its  plays,  George  Cohan 
once  said  to  me,  "  Of  course  the  public  likes  happy 
endings  in  the  theatre  just  as  anybody  likes  happy 
endings  to  anything  anywhere.  It  is  silly  to  blame 
the  happy  ending  taste  on  a  theatrical  audience  alone. 
It  is  as  if  one  were  to  say,  '  When  a  man  gets  into  a 
theatre  he  wants  everything  to  be  exactly  the  oppo- 
site of  what  he  wants  it  to  be  outside  the  theatre.' 
The  fact  that  a  man,  or  woman,  pays  a  couple  of  dol- 
lars to  go  to  a  theatre  certainly  doesn't  mean  that 
he  or  she  is  paying  a  couple  of  dollars  to  change  his 
or  her  nature.  A  man  goes  to  a  baseball  game  to 
[220] 


ITS   PUBLIC 

see  the  home  team  win.  He  goes  to  a  billiard  par- 
lour to  watch  a  game  of  billiards  between  his  friend 
Bill  Botts  and  another  fellow  he  doesn't  like  and  of 
course  wants  the  game  to  turn  out  favourably  for 
friend  Bill.  He  goes  to  the  office  in  the  morning 
and,  when  five  o'clock  comes,  he  wants  his  day  to 
have  turned  out  a  prosperous  and  a  happy  day.  A 
man  wants  to  see  those  persons  he  likes  or  admires 
win  out.  He  wants  to  be  happy  himself.  Wher- 
ever he  is,  whatever  he  does,  whomever  he  watches ! 
Why  should  human  nature  change  —  or  be  expected 
to  change  —  the  minute  it  deposits  its  person  in  an 
orchestra  seat?  This  is  why  the  public  wants  happy 
endings  to  its  plays.  Just  as  a  man  will  overlook 
an  umpire's  somewhat  '  off  '  decision  so  long  as  it 
favours  his  home  ball  team,  so  will  the  public  over- 
look an  analogous  fault  in  dramatic  logic  so  long 
as  it  favours  its  hero  and  heroine  in  a  play.  Show 
me  a  man  or  woman  who  down  in  his  heart  prefers 
an  unhappy  ending  to  a  play  to  a  happy  one  and  I 
will,  other  things  being  equal,  show  you  a  big 
liar.  Human  nature  is  the  same  with  all  of 
us.  Some  people  are  just  a  little  more  ex- 
pert than  others  in  pretending  it  isn't.  But  you'll 
find  that  not  one  of  these  fibbers  or  fakers  will  take 
a  chance  in  not  picking  up  a  horseshoe,  in  opening 
an  umbrella  inside  the  house,  in  throwing  away  a 
four-leaf  clover  or  in  failing  to  rap  on  wood  and 
whistle  after  he  has  been  boasting  that  he  hasn't 
had  the  old  pain  in  his  right  leg  for  the  last  three 
months." 

In    vaudeville    such    men    as    Aaron    Hoffman, 

[221] 


THE   POPULAR    THEATRE 

Thomas  J.  Gray  and  Will  Cressy  have  for  years  been 
supplying  vaudeville  actors  with  exactly  the  kind 
of  jokes  the  vaudeville  audiences  want.  Just  as  the 
United  Cigar  Stores  Company  figured  out  that  all 
men  like  to  look  at  themselves  in  mirrors  and  placed 
large  mirrors  in  each  one  of  their  countless  stores 
with  eminently  satisfactory  magnetic  results,  so  has 
Mr.  Gray,  for  example,  figured  out  that  a  comic 
vaudeville  monologist  who  calls  the  orchestra  leader 
Rudolph  will  make  the  vaudeville  public  laugh  itself 
half  to  death. 

A  well-known  and  experienced  publisher  has  said 
that  one  can  usually  spot  a  young  writer's  first  at- 
tempt at  a  short  fiction  story  in  the  fact  that  it  ends 
with  a  suicide.  And  an  equally  well-known  and  ex- 
perienced theatrical  producer  has  said  that  one  can 
usually  spot  a  young  writer's  first  attempt  at  play- 
writing  in  the  fact  that  the  play  ends  unhappily. 
From  which,  since  it  is  pretty  generally  conceded  that 
the  taste  of  the  public  in  general  is  to  no  small  de- 
gree the  taste  of  its  younger  element,  one  might  de- 
duce that  what  the  public  mostly  wanted  was  sad- 
ness. The  public  does  want  sadness,  but  qualified 
sadness.  The  most  profitable  theatrical  property 
the  world  has  ever  known  is  the  Cinderella  story, 
a  tale  of  pleasurable  melancholy.  But  the  most  pop- 
ular attitude  toward  what  we  may  call  "  sad  "  plays 
is  the  peculiar  one  of  believing  that,  since  every 
cloud  has  a  silver  lining,  the  playwright  should 
dramatize  the  cloud  in  such  a  way  that  the  public  may 
see  the  cloud  through  the  silver  lining  rather  than 
the  silver  lining  through  the  cloud.  The  silver  lin- 
[222] 


ITS  PUBLIC 

ing,  that  is,  should  (technically  and  figuratively 
speaking)  be  placed  down-stage  (near  the  foot- 
lights) and  the  cloud  up-stage  (near  the  back-drop). 
The  whole  business  reminds  one  of  the  old  trick 
cloudy  sentence,  "  Able  was  I  ere  I  saw  Elba,"  which 
reads  the  same  backwards  as  forwards :  it  is  curious, 
but  it  works.  .  .  .  To  argue  that  the  public  does 
not  want  sadness  in  the  theatre  on  the  ground  that 
"  there's  enough  trouble  in  real  life  without  seeing 
it  in  the  theatre  "  is  to  argue  that  the  public  does  not 
want  happiness  in  real  life  because  there  is  enough 
of  it  in  the  theatre. 

The  Cinderella  story,  dramatized  with  the  silver 
lining  toward  the  audience,  as  playwrights  from 
Carroll  Fleming  down  to  Hartley  Manners  have  for 
the  last  twenty-five  years  been  proving,  is  a  veritable 
theatrical  mint.  It  is  only  when  the  story  is  drama- 
tized the  other  way  'round,  as  in  the  case  of  "  Rich 
Man,  Poor  Man,"  that  it  comes  a  box-office  cropper. 
And  even  then  a  cropper  only  in  part. 

Some  of  the  public's  invariable  preferences  are 
difficult  to  understand,  yet  there  is  no  need  for  the 
person  desiring  merely  to  capitalize  such  preferences 
and  make  money  out  of  them  to  understand  them. 
Such  preferences  are  axioms.  Why  the  public  should 
always  want  a  small  button  on  the  top  of  its  cap, 
or  a  more  or  less  decorative  line  of  stamped  leather 
two  inches  this  side  of  the  tip  of  its  shoe,  or  three 
buttons  on  the  back  of  the  cuff  of  the  sleeve  on  its 
sack  coat,  or  black  paper  with  gold  letters  on  its 
packets  of  needles,  or  a  little  bow  in  the  back  of  the 
inside  of  its  derby  hat,  the  oracles  would  have  a 

[223] 


THE   POPULAR    THEATRE 

difficult  time  trying  to  solve.  There  does  not  seem 
to  be  any  good  reason  for  such  useless  and  exotic 
things;  they  are,  in  good  truth,  just  a  trifle  silly. 
Yet  that  is  what  the  public  wants  —  so  why  not  give 
it  to  the  public?  And  the  same  thing  holds  true  in 
the  more  relevant  case  of  the  theatre  and  its  amuse- 
ment fare.  Your  playwright  who  is  in  the  show  busi- 
ness less  for  the  show  than  for  the  business  knows 
perfectly  well  that  nine  members  of  the  music-show 
public  out  of  every  ten  will  laugh  inordinately  at  the 
comedian  who,  on  making  his  exit,  suddenly  bends 
himself  in  at  the  bustle  as  if  anticipating  a  kick  from 
the  rear,  and  at  the  comedian  who,  upon  being  called 
a  Limburger  cheese,  strikes  a  heroic  attitude  like 
Robert  Downing  in  "  The  Gladiator  "  and  retorts 
that  those  are  strong  words ;  so  the  playwright  sticks 
them  off-hand  into  the  libretto  in  .exactly  the  same 
way  that  the  cap-maker  sticks  the  little  button  on  top 
of  the  cap. 

No  fair-minded  man  will  believe  that  a  song  writer 
like  Irving  Berlin  or  Jerome  Kern,  for  example,  just 
happens  accidentally  to  hit  the  popular  taste  almost 
every  time  he  sits  down  and  writes  a  new  song.  The 
interposing  of  such  an  argument  is  too  ridiculous. 
Such  song  writers  do  not  merely  "  hit "  the  pub- 
lic's taste;  they  know  the  public's  taste.  They  know 
that  taste  as  accurately  as  the  manufacturer  of  a  so- 
called  moving-picture  "  news  weekly  "  knows  a  mov- 
ing-picture theatre  audience  will  inevitably  applaud 
when  a  regiment  of  marching  soldiers  is  flashed  upon 
the  screen. 

There  is  in  New  York  a  large  hotel  whose  man- 
[224] 


ITS  PUBLIC 

ager  figured  out  the  popular  taste  accurately  and 
shrewdly  enough  to  appreciate  that  men  in  the  mass 
—  for  all  that  is  claimed  to  the  contrary  —  like  now 
and  then  a  bit  of  candy.  The  hotel  man  knew  that 
men  seldom,  if  ever,  buy  candy  for  themselves,  so 
he  passed  out  a  few  pieces  gratis  to  each  table  in 
his  restaurant,  and  his  restaurant  soon  began  to  be 
talked  about.  Men  liked  the  place  and  while,  true 
enough,  they  did  not  go  around  telling  about  the 
candy,  it  was  really  the  candy  (as  the  hotel  manager 
knew)  that  subconsciously  made  them  talk  about  the 
restaurant  and  go  to  it  equally  subconsciously.  The 
restaurant  has  proved  a  great  success.  ...  I  my- 
self go  there  at  least  once  a  week. 

It  is  a  peculiarity  of  the  world  of  the  theatre  that 
a  manager  is  not  regarded  as  a  rich  man  unless  he 
is  a  very  rich  man.  To  make  a  mere  five  hundred 
or  a  thousand  dollars  a  week  is  considered  nigh  unto 
failure.  And  it  is  doubtless  for  this  reason  that 
the  delusion  as  to  the  impossibility  of  deciphering 
what  the  public  wants  exists  in  the  theatre.  But  it 
is  just  that  and  nothing  more  —  a  delusion.  The 
figuring  out  of  what  the  public  wants  is  an  amazingly 
simple  thing. 

For  instance,  one  of  the  things  that  the  public 
wants  is  an  argument  like  this. 


[225] 


PROPERTY  OF 
DEPARTMENT  OF  DRAMATIC  ART 

Chapter  Seventeen:  In  Conclusion 

In  the  career  of  the  critic  of  the  theatre  there 
are  three  more  or  less  distinct  periods:  first,  the 
period  in  which  he  passionately  believes  and  vehe- 
mently conjures  the  theatre  to  be  a  lyceum  of  art; 
second,  the  period  in  which  he  passionately  hopes 
and  vehemently  prays  that  the  theatre  may  be  a 
lyceum  of  art;  and  third,  the  period  in  which  he 
rather  good-naturedly  comes  to  the  conclusion  that 
his  view  of  the  theatre  has  been  all  wrong,  and 
doesn't  admit  it.  After  fourteen  years  of  profes- 
sional criticism,  I  have  the  honour  to  announce  that 
I  am  presently  approaching  the  third  period. 

That  the  percussion  of  wit  and  idea  is  consider- 
ably less  the  business  of  the  stage  than  the  percus- 
sion of  bilbo  and  rear  trouser  is  an  aesthetic  to  which 
even  the  most  stubborn-minded  critic  becomes  in  time 
affectingly  privy.  Yet  that  he  continues  thereafter 
to  maintain  his  old  pretence  and  keep  his  discovery 
secret  is  no  more  to  his  discredit  than  it  is  to  the  dis- 
credit of  a  physician  to  keep  the  truth  from  a  pa- 
tient at  death's  point  or  to  the  discredit  of  a  priest 
to  keep  confidential  a  parishioner's  confession  of  sin. 
For  example,  the  wittiest  line  of  Alfred  Capus  makes 
me  laugh  in  the  theatre  not  one-tenth  so  hard  as  the 
spectacle  of  one  pickle-herring  clouting  another  over 
the  ear  with  a  chocolate  eclair,  but  do  I  admit  the 
[226] 


IN   CONCLUSION 

fact?  I  do  not.  And  why?  For  the  same  reason 
that  the  defending  lawyer  doesn't  admit  the  avowed 
guilt  of  his  client.  The  critic  who  best  serves  the 
theatre  must  be  at  once  a  hypocrite  and  a  surpassing 
liar.  He  must  stand,  a  giant  and  immovable  rock, 
against  the  tides  of  truth  and  honesty.  He  must, 
for  the  good  of  the  theatre,  deny  with  all  the  vouch- 
ers and  eloquence  at  his  command  that  the  theatre 
is  a  mere  place  for  light  amusement,  and  what  is 
more,  he  must  prove  that  denial  unassailably,  in- 
controvertibly.  If  the  theatre  is  to  be  made  better, 
finer,  it  is  to  be  made  so  only  by  a  critical  conspiracy 
of  silence.  The  married  man  lies  about  the  happi- 
ness of  married  life,  converts  the  recalcitrant  and 
doubting  bachelor  and  so  serves  the  race.  The  his- 
torian lies  about  history,  spreads  the  falsehoods  in 
the  school  books  and  so  Serves  his  nation  by  creat- 
ing in  its  future  peoples  a  national  admiration  and 
a  deep  patriotism.  Parents  lie  that  the  virgin  and 
blooming  minds  of  their  children  may  not  be  sullied 
by  unlovely  facts;  the  church  lies  that  life  may  be 
made  the  more  mellow  and  hope  the  more  reason- 
able ;  art  itself  lies  that  the  truth  may  be  made  beau- 
tiful. And  so,  too,  the  critic  of  theatrical  art  must 
lie.  While  agreeing  that  the  primary  function  of 
the  theatre  is  the  stimulation  of  its  audiences'  emo- 
tions, and  that  the  theatre  serves  its  ends  in  the  de- 
gree of  such  stimuli,  he  must  yet  with  professorial 
air  pretend  to  believe  that  Margaret  Mayo's  "  Baby 
Mine  "  is  not  so  laughful  as  Moliere's  "  Fourberies 
de  Scapin,"  that  Sheldon's  "  Nigger "  is  not  so 
thrilling  as  Maeterlinck's  "  Death  of  Tintagiles," 

[227] 


THE   POPULAR    THEATRE 

that  Meyer-Forster's  "  Old  Heidelberg  "  is  not  so 
touching  as  Ibsen's  "  Little  Eyolf,"  and  that  blonde 
Miss  Marion  Davies  in  a  blue  dress  doing  nothing, 
and  doing  it  not  particularly  well,  is  not  so  in- 
cendiary as  Mrs.  Leslie  Carter  doing  "  Two 
Women  "  with  an  immense  technical  fire. 

If  civilization  is  the  history  of  repressions,  the 
artistic  prosperity  of  the  theatre  is  the  history  of 
critical  repressions  no  less.  The  idea  that  the  first- 
rate  critic  of  the  theatrical  arts  who  knows  Shake- 
speare's "  Merry  Wives  of  Windsor "  by  heart 
honestly  prefers  Shakespeare's  "  Merry  Wives  of 
Windsor  "  in  the  theatre  to  de  Caillavet's  and  de 
Flers'  "  The  King  " —  and  in  the  soundest  of  esti- 
mates is  more  genuinely  amused  by  it  —  is  of  a  kid- 
ney with  the  idea  that  he  actually  finds  a  greater 
measure  of  comical  satisfaction  in  Marcel  Vallee's 
Toby  Belch  in  Copeau's  presentation  of  "  Twelfth 
Night  "  than  in  Raymond  Hitchcock's  photographer 
in  the  presentation  of  "  Hitchy-Koo."  But  to  ask 
the  critic  frankly  to  confess  to  such  preferences  and 
frankly  to  expound  their  integrity  is  to  ask  him  to 
bring  the  uneducated  mob  theatregoer  down  to  his 
own  educated  theatrical  level;  in  other  words,  to 
rend  a  child's  pretty  fairy  tale,  to  destroy  those  illu- 
sions of  the  theatre  that,  like  a  desert's  blue  mirage, 
lead  ever  the  trusting  hopefully  on  —  in  short,  out 
of  his  superior  knowledge  to  rob  the  theatre  of  its 
beautiful  faith  in  Santa  Clauses  and  Little  Bright 
Eyes,  in  Titanias  and  Tinker  Bells  and  all  the  other 
nixies  of  an  artistic  never-never-land.  Your  astute 
critic  knows  better  than  this.  To  him,  his  reader 

[228] 


IN   CONCLUSION 

is  ever  a  little  Patricia  Carleon  and  he  no  intruder 
upon  her  fond  phantasms. 

The  biography  of  dramatic  criticism  is  the  auto- 
biography of  sly  hypocrisy.  The  younger  Dumas, 
a  sharp  critic,  comparing  the  theatre  with  the  church, 
said,  "  You  cannot  gain  the  ear  of  the  multitude  for 
any  length  of  time  or  in  any  efficacious  way  save  in 
the  name  of  their  higher  interests."  And  then  sat 
himself  down  and  wrote  "  Camille,"  which,  in  the 
name  of  the  multitude's  higher  interests,  made  the 
multitude  slobber  over  a  sentimental  prostitute. 
Hazlitt  criticizing  ever  directly  from  the  intellect, 
paid  his  greatest  tribute  to  Joseph  Fawcett,  a  friend 
who  criticized  ever  directly  from  the  emotions. 
Where  a  man  who  has  satirized  and  made  droll  mock 
of  his  own  critical  attitude  so  tidily  as  Anatole 
France?  And  the  critic  Shaw  who  wrote  that  in 
the  theatre  he  shivered  with  apprehension  as  to  the 
potential  brutalities  of  Benedick  and  Mercutio  when- 
ever they  approached  a  woman  or  an  old  man  is  the 
same  playwright  Shaw  who  wrote  Bill  Walker,  Ed- 
staston  and  a  round  dozen  like  them. 

It  always  has  been  that  the  critic  has  eloquently 
professed  one  thing  about  the  theatre  while  he  was 
a  critic  and  has  then  promptly  pulled  off  his  slouch 
hat  and  whiskers  when  he  turned  playwright  and 
done  exactly  the  opposite.  The  dramatic  criticisms 
of  Robert  de  Flers  in  "  Figaro  "  and  his  subsequent 
comic  opera  "  Les  Travaux  d'Hercule  "  and  comedy 
"  Les  Sentiers  de  la  Vertu  "  are  as  hard  to  recon- 
cile one  with  the  other  as  are  the  criticisms  of  Jules 
Lemaitre  in  the  "  Journal  des  Debates  "  and  his 

[229] 


subsequent  "  Revoltee."  To  read  Wedekind's  "  Art 
of  the  Theatre  "  and  other  critical  papers  and  then 
see  his  plays  is  to  smile  broadly  into  one's  cuff.  To 
read  Bahr,  the  critic,  in  the  Vienna  Tageblatt,  and 
then  to  lay  an  eye  to  Bahr,  the  playwright,  in  "  The 
Mother  "  or  "  The  Apostle  "  is  to  negotiate  a  hol- 
low cough.  The  Charles  Lamb  of  criticism  is  hardly 
the  Charles  Lamb  of  the  prevenient  farce  "  Mr.  H." 
Victor  Hugo,  the  critic  of  "  Le  Conservateur  Lit- 
teraire,"  is  a  twenty-eighth  cousin  to  Victor  Hugo, 
the  dramatist  of  "  Le  Roi  S'Amuse."  .  .  .  And 
seizing  the  parachute  and  dropping  a  thousand  miles, 
we  behold  Mr.  Clayton  Hamilton,  to  whom  little 
appears  critically  palatable  save  Moliere  and  Shake- 
speare, writing  "  The  Big  Idea  "  for  production  by 
George  Cohan,  and,  what  is  even  more  droll,  Mr. 
George  Jean  Nathan,  to  whom  little  appears  crit- 
ically palatable  save  French  farce  and  Ziegfeld,  writ- 
ing the  Scandinavian  "  Eternal  Mystery."  What 
an  obscene  clowning  is  indeed  on  the  world! 

But  as  man's  conscious  self-deception  as  to  wom- 
an's superior  spirituality  is  vital  to  the  prosperity  of 
society,  so  this  conscious  critical  gullery  is  essential 
to  the  highest  interests  of  the  theatre.  No  first- 
rate,  or  even  second-rate,  critic  any  longer  believes 
that  the  stage  is  the  place  for  thought,  or  views  the 
theatre  as  an  educational  institution.  The  nearest 
the  stage  ever  gets  to  thought  is  the  presentation  and 
re-establishment  of  an  accepted  platitude  in  terms 
of  an  unaccepted  ratiocination.  Thus,  such  a  so- 
called  thoughtful  play  as  "  Man  and  Superman  "  is 
simply  the  accepted  Schopenhauer  platitude  on 

[230] 


IN   CONCLUSION 

woman  the  pursuer  expounded  in  what  to  a  theatre 
audience  that  has  always  accepted  the  platitude  with 
a  deadly  seriousness,  has  hitherto  been  to  that  audi- 
ence an  unaccepted  sportive  dialectic.  Thus,  again, 
such  a  so-called  thoughtful  play  as  Bergstrom's 
"  Karen  Borneman  "  is  merely  the  accepted  de  Lam- 
bert platitude  on  the  command  of  the  passions  ex- 
pounded in  what  to  a  theatre  audience  that  since  the 
time  of  Congreve  has  accepted  the  platitude  with 
a  light  heart,  has  hitherto  been  to  that  audience  an 
unaccepted  tragic  dialectic. 

Secondly,  no  first-rate,  or  even  second-rate,  critic 
longer  believes  that  the  stage  is  the  place  for  fine 
dramatic  literature  since,  save  on  very  rare  occa- 
sions, the  presentation  of  fine  dramatic  literature  is 
left  entirely  in  the  hands  of  amateurs,  and  since  ama- 
teurs, for  all  their  initial  acumen,  are  scarcely  happy 
in  bringing  to  fine  dramatic  literature  the  histrionic 
experience,  the  finish  and  warmth,  essential  to  its 
prosperous  interpretation.  To  object  here  that  this 
is  a  very  silly  argument  since  it  offers  no  reason  why 
fine  dramatic  literature  should  not  therefore  all  the 
more  find  its  place  upon  the  professional  stage  is  to 
believe  that  the  professional  actor  who  enjoys  all 
the  experience,  finish  and  warmth  that  the  amateur 
lacks,  enjoys  at  the  same  time  the  amateur's  intelli- 
gence. Can  you,  in  all  the  theatres  of  the  world, 
and  more  particularly  in  the  English-speaking  thea- 
tres, think  of  a  carefully  deduced  company  of  pro- 
fessional actors  able  to  interpret  for  instance,  Dun- 
sany's  "  Gods  of  the  Mountain  "  half  way  to  your 
satisfaction?  Can  you,  in  all  the  theatres  of  the 


THE   POPULAR    THEATRE 

world,  think  of  a  single  stage  producer  able  to  pro- 
duce, to  the  full  of  your  imagination,  the  "  Dream 
Play  "  of  Strindberg?  Fine  dramatic  literature,  in 
short,  belongs  not  upon  the  stage,  but  in  the  library. 
The  theory,  revered  in  certain  quarters,  that  all  plays 
are  written  to  be  acted  or  they  are  not  plays  is  of  a 
piece  with  the  theory  that  all  music  is  written  to  be 
sung  or  it  is  not  music.  Some  plays  are  too  beauti- 
ful for  the  spoken  stage ;  they  are  orchestrated  alone 
for  the  strings  of  the  silent  imagination.  ...  A 
poem  need  not  be  recited  aloud  to  be  a  poem. 

In  a  word,  the  discerning  critic  comes  to  realize 
that  the  place  of  the  theatre  in  the  community  is 
infinitely  less  the  place  of  the  university,  the  studio 
and  the  art  gallery  than  the  place  of  the  circus,  the 
rathskeller  and  the  harem.  The  theatre  is  no  more 
to  be  appraised  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  casual 
college  doctor  who  once  in  a  while  finds  his  alien  way 
into  it  than  the  bar-room  is  to  be  appraised  from  the 
point  of  view  of  the  prohibitionist.  The  theatre  is, 
simply,  plainly  —  and  in  the  soundest  critical  defi- 
nition —  a  place  where  a  well-educated,  well-bred, 
well-fed  man  may  find  something  to  divert  him  pleas- 
antly for  a  couple  of  hours.  And  how  is  this  well- 
educated,  well-bred,  well-fed  man  to  be  diverted? 
Certainly  not  by  so-called  intellectual  drama,  for  if 
he  desired  intellectual  stimulation  he  would  go  to  a 
lecture  chamber  or  a  comradely  ale  clinic  or  stay  at 
home  and  read.  Certainly  not  by  an  ostentatious 
spectacle  of  good  manners,  for  good  manners  are 
no  novelty  to  him  and  did  he  crave  an  immediate 
pageant  of  them  all  he  would  need  do  is  call  upon 

[232] 


IN   CONCLUSION 

one  of  his  friends.  Certainly  not  by  fine  literature, 
for  fine  literature  is  less  a  diversion  to  him  than  a 
regular  habit.  And  certainly  not  by  any  analogous 
thing  that  is  part  and  parcel  of  his  routine.  What 
he  wants  is  the  opposite  of  that  to  which  he  is  ac- 
customed. In  brief,  diversion  by  contrast,  by 
aesthetic  shock.  And  this  is  what  he  looks  to  the 
theatre  to  provide  him.  He  wants  horse-play,  belly 
laughter,  pretty  girls,  ingenious  scenery,  imported 
ladies  of  joy  and  eminent  home  talent,  insane  melo- 
drama, lovely  limbs,  lively  tunes,  gaudy  colours,  loud 
humours,  farce,  flippancy,  fol-de-rol.  He  wants 
Billy  B.  Van  above  Robert  B.  Mantell,  Ann  Pen- 
nington  above  Olga  Nethersole,  the  "  Follies  "  above 
"  The  Wild  Duck,"  Urban  at  his  worst  above  Co- 
peau  at  his  best,  the  slapstick  above  the  sceptre 
of  Claudius  —  life,  colour,  movement  and  gaiety 
above  problems,  monotones,  technique  and  authentic 
merit. 

This,  then,  is  the  fairest  critical  view  of  the  thea- 
tre. But  since  it  is  obviously  directed  at  and  from 
only  the  best  type  of  theatregoer  it  is,  in  like  obvious- 
ness, not  safely  to  be  divulged  to  the  masses.  Of 
this  the  sincere  critic  is  ever  deeply  appreciative.  He 
realizes  that  the  average  theatregoer  is  under-edu- 
cated and  under-bred  and  thus  not  aesthetically  ready 
for  the  custard  pie  arts  which  are  meet  for  his  well- 
educated  and  well-bred  brother.  A  boy's  constitu- 
tion must  be  fortified  with  pure  milk  before  he  may, 
as  a  man,  amuse  himself  with  ethyl  alcohol;  a  boy 
must  know  the  Bible  before  Rabelais,  ladies  before 
geishas,  addition  before  subtraction.  And,  in  like 

[233] 


THE   POPULAR    THEATRE 

manner,  the  average  illiterate  theatregoer  must  be 
confronted  steadily  with  pure  artistic  thoughts  and 
elevated  purposes  and  his  footsteps  set  with  diligence 
and  care  in  the  direction  of  the  so-called  literary 
drama  and  the  drama  of  ideas  that  he  may  in  time 
gain  the  necessary  background  we  all  of  us  must 
gain  ere  we  are  privileged  to  cavort  before  it.  And 
so,  gentlemen,  when  I  write  in  the  public  prints  that 
I  enjoy  the  comedy  of  Shakespeare  more  than  the 
comedy  of  Harry  Watson,  Jr.,  I  lie.  Just  as  I  lie 
when  with  all  my  familiar  and  persuasive  eloquence 
I  prove  that  I  find  a  greater  theatrical  pleasure  in 
Tolstoi  than  in  the  dancing  of  Doloretes.  My  only 
apology  is  that  I  lie,  and  nobly,  for  the  good  of  the 
theatre. 

*     *     * 

These  superficially  unseemly  thoughts  obtrude  as 
I  consider  the  case  such  a  play  as  Mr.  Jesse  Lynch 
Williams'  "Why  Marry?"  When,  several  years 
ago,  I  read  Mr.  Williams', play — it  was  known 
originally  by  the  title  "  And  So  They  Were  Mar- 
ried " —  I  enjoyed  it  immensely.  It  impressed  me 
as  a  well-written,  amiably  sophisticated  and  unusually 
witty  little  piece  of  work.  But  when,  several  months 
ago,  I  saw  Mr.  Williams'  well-written,  amiably 
sophisticated  and  unusually  witty  play  in  the  theatre, 
I  quite  frankly  confess  to  having  had  a  poor  eve- 
ning of  it.  The  reasons  are  not  complex.  In  the 
first  place,  where  it  took  me  a  little  less  than  an 
hour  to  read  the  little  play  in  the  warm  comfort  of 
my  rooms,  it  took  me  exactly  two  hours  and  a  half 
to  engage  it  in  a  draughty  theatre.  Where  its  pleas- 

[234} 


IN   CONCLUSION 

ant  light  humours  were  ample  to  divert  me  and  win 
me  completely  in  a  leisure  library  hour,  these  same 
pleasant  light  humours  were  altogether  too  meagre 
to  cover  an  inflated  two  and  one-half  hours  of  stage 
traffic  in  which  the  amiable  little  play  I  had  so  en- 
joyed in  the  reading  was  with  the  conventional  rude- 
ness subjected  to  actors  who  absurdly  delayed  their 
several  entrances  that  they  might,  in  the  Broadway 
vernacular,  "  get  a  hand,"  to  the  stereotyped  actor 
pauses  after  good  lines  by  way  of  forcing  the  audi- 
ence's laughter,  to  the  elaborate  emphasizing  of 
points  and  hocus-pocus  of  "  dressing  "  the  stage  and 
crossings  and  sittings  and  emotional  byplays  and  bat- 
tles for  the  centre  of  the  stage  and  takings  of  bows 
at  the  ends  of  the  acts  and  irrelevant  curtain  speeches 
and  all  the  like  theatrical  rigmarole. 

To  withstand  the  effects  of  such  stage  devastations, 
Mr.  Williams'  intrinsically  meritorious  play  is,  for 
me,  of  too  tender  a  theatrical  skin.  It  lacks  as  a 
show  all  that  it  possesses  as  a  play.  Compared 
promiscuously  and  not  a  little  drolly  in  local  quar- 
ters with  the  work  of  Shaw,  it  is  deficient  in  all  those 
show  qualities  which  the  latter  dramatist,  having 
once  been  a  critic,  realizes  are  essential  to  the  pro- 
tection and  salvation  of  wit  upon  the  acted  stage. 
After  a  turn  at  wits,  you  will  always  find  the  wily 
Celt  bolstering  up  things  for  his  literate  audiences  — 
and  his  illiterate  actors  —  with  a  turn  at  slapsticks. 
In  this  wise,  he  at  once  preserves  his  text  from 
stupid  mummers  and  for  intelligent  auditors.  Thus, 
his  Patiomkin  of  "  Great  Catherine,"  after  each  witty 
observation,  invariably  wipes  his  nose  with  his  dress- 

[235] 


THE   POPULAR    THEATRE 

ing  gown  or  falls  peremptorily  upon  his  hindquarters 
or  issues  an  amazing  expectoration  or  kicks  the  per- 
son addressed  in  the  hip-pocket.  Thus,  in  like  sit- 
uation, his  Cleopatra  jabs  Caesar  with  a  pin  and 
paddles  the  rear  Ftatateeta  with  a  snake-skin,  his 
Inca  makes  his  moustachios  jump  up  and  down 
by  pulling  a  hidden  string,  his  Tanner  grabs  a  chauf- 
feur by  the  legs  and  makes  him  waddle  like  a  wheel- 
barrow, his  Bentley  Summerhays  throws  a  fit  on  the 
carpet.  .  .  .  Mr.  Williams,  a  theatrical  idealist,  on 
the  other  hand  sets  his  wit  upon  the  cold  stage  nude 
and  shivering,  and  leaves  it  there  crying  for  a  cloth- 
ing of  extrinsic  theatrical  stratagems,  crying  to  be 
taken  back  home  to  the  library.  And  so  I  repeat 
that  such  a  play  as  Mr.  Williams'  is  a  play  of  a 
quality  decidedly  and  unmistakably  superior  to  the 
plays  we  commonly  get  on  our  native  popular  stage 
and,  by  the  same  mark  and  accordingly,  a  play  not 
so  appropriate  to  a  stage  designed  for  purposes  of 
diversion  as  the  decidedly  and  unmistakably  inferior, 
but  vastly  more  gay  and  sprightly,  play  of  the  basic- 
ally not  dissimilar  type  of  Miss  Clare  Kummer's 
"  Successful  Calamity." 


THE   END 


[236] 


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